For a man who feverishly safeguards his privacy, Harrison Ford sure is one of the most famous people on the planet. With more than 30 amazing movies to his name, his profile is just hard to ignore. But which are truly the best?
Born in Chicago in 1942 to retired actors, Harrison Ford didn't take up acting himself until a drama class in his senior year of college at Ripon College in Wisconsin. In 1964, Ford traveled to Los Angeles to make it as an actor but struggled throughout the decade, doing little more than minor roles in television shows like Gunsmoke, Ironside, Kung Fu, and more.
Dissatisfied with his prospects, Ford took up carpentry to support his family. He soon built up a clientele of prominent Hollywood writers and producers; his networking eventually got him in front of directors like Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, who gave Ford his first real roles on the big screen. One of them was for a bizarre, outlandish space movie that made no sense to pretty much anyone except the people making it: a movie called Star Wars. The rest is history.
In commemoration of Harrison Ford's ongoing career, here are 33 of Harrison Ford's greatest movies.
33. Brüno (2009)
Harrison Ford is barely in Brüno, and that's the point. While Sacha Baron Cohen's follow-up to his smash hit mockumentary Borat falls short of expectations, one of its best jokes features Ford in an incredible cameo. Centered around obnoxious fashion journalist Brüno (Cohen), Brüno spends most of the movie promoting "an exclusive interview with Harrison Ford" - only for it to be just seconds of Ford telling Brüno to piss off. It is easily one of the movie's best jokes. (Maybe the only good one, if we're being honest.) Hilariously, Ford was totally in on the gag.
32. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Harrison Ford has a very small part in Francis Ford Coppola's ageless war epic Apocalypse Now, but the scene where he appears is unforgettable. Early in the movie, Ford plays U.S. Army Colonel G. Lucas (named after George Lucas, fun fact!) who briefs hungover Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on his secret mission to assassinate the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). It's one of the most pivotal and most haunting scenes in the movie, where the villainous Kurtz makes his presence known through manic tape recordings. The scene is punctuated with Ford instructing Willard to carry out his task "by whatever means available."
31. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
After making his return as Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, Harrison Ford took back his whip and fedora as Indiana Jones for a fifth and final movie. In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the famed adventuring archaeologist and professor embarks on one last mission: team with his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) to locate Archimedes' Dial before a Nazi scientist tries to use it to travel back in time from 1969 and help the Axis win World War II. Despite Ford's best efforts, Dial of Destiny is far from Indy's finest hour.
30. American Graffiti (1973)
Before George Lucas took audiences to a galaxy far, far away, he took them back to his teenage years racing hot rods and vibing out to rock 'n roll in Modesto, California. Set in 1962, Lucas' film American Graffiti follows a group of high school graduates enjoying their very last night of summer vacation before their lives change forever. Harrison Ford has a very minor role in the movie as a cocky drag racer named Bob. He may not be as cool as Han Solo, but American Graffiti is still an American classic.
29. K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
Ever wanted to hear Harrison Ford speak with a Russian accent? In Kathryn Bigelow's 2002 sub thriller K-19: The Widowmaker, Ford stars as Alexei Vostrikov, the real-life Soviet submarine commander of K-19 - the first submarine equipped with nuclear ballistic missiles. While K-19 earned only mixed reviews and was a box office bomb, Ford is predictably solid as a ship captain with a chip on his shoulder. The movie also gets bonus points for featuring Liam Neeson, making K-19: The Widowmaker an unusual reunion of Star Wars veterans.
28. Ender's Game (2013)
In this big budget screen adaptation of Orson Scott Card's 1985 sci-fi novel, Harrison Ford plays a major supporting role as Colonel Hyrum Graff, the principal of a military academy where main protagonist Ender (Asa Butterfield) excels as a prodigy whilst mankind prepares for an alien invasion. Amid Hollywood's brief boom of blockbusters based on young adult best-sellers, Ender's Game failed to excite audiences in the same way as Twilight and The Hunger Games. Still, you can't beat Harrison Ford playing a mentor figure who sees dangerous brilliance in an incredibly youthful mind.
27. Six Days, Seven Nights (1998)
From Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman comes this playful action rom-com that sees Harrison Ford make use of his skills as a legitimate licensed pilot. In Six Days, Seven Nights, Ford plays a gruff, cantankerous cargo pilot who flies a New York fashion magazine editor (Anne Heche) to an assignment in Tahiti. A powerful storm throws the pair off course to land on a deserted island, forcing the two to put their differences aside and work together and find rescue – and possibly more. Cute and harmless, Six Days, Seven Nights is worth a ride in the clouds.
26. The Call of the Wild (2020)
Based on Jack London's celebrated novel, The Call of the Wild sees Harrison Ford star as John Thorton, a frontiersman during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush; Thorton becomes the owner of the movie's actual main character Buck, a beautiful Saint Bernard/Scotch Shepherd who is abducted from California and winds up in Alaska. Together, the two embark on a life-changing adventure through the Alaskan wilderness. Despite some eerie VFX that strives to make Buck an expressive character, Ford is reliably superb as the movie's primary human anchor.
25. The Devil's Own (1997)
In Alan J. Pakula's final directorial work before his death, Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt co-star in this heart-pounding thriller about trust, duty, and identity. Brad Pitt leads the movie as Frankie, a devoted member of the Irish Republican Army who comes to the United States to buy illegal weapons. Frankie stays with Tom O'Meara (Ford), an Irish-American NYPD officer who is unaware of Frankie's IRA affiliations. While Frankie and Sgt. O'Meara forge a strong friendship, their bond is tested when O'Meara inevitably learns of Frankie's true mission and his family end up in the crosshairs. The Devil's Own was a box office hit, but stories of heated on-set tensions between Ford and Pitt are legendary. In a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Ford said of the movie: "We had a real hard time making it, but Alan made, I think, a really good movie out of it."
24. The Age of Adaline (2015)
In The Age of Adaline, released in 2015, Blake Lively stars as a woman who survives a freak accident that prevents her from aging. Harrison Ford appears in the movie as William Jones, the father of a philanthropist (Michiel Huisman) who is stunned to recognize Adaline from a past romance they shared decades earlier. While The Age of Adaline may not sweep everyone off their feet, Lively and Ford are wonderful both in their individual performances and as an unlikely onscreen romantic pair. In a review by Matt Zoller Seitz for RogerEbert.com, Seitz remarked: "This is Ford's best performance since The Fugitive, maybe since Witness."
23. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
When Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hit theaters in 2008, some die-hard Indiana Jones fans were livid. Between Shia LaBeouf's obnoxious role as Indy's son and the movie's inclusion of space aliens (as if Biblical magic and ghostly knights aren't fanciful), Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had people going nuclear – and there were no lead refrigerators to hide from them. But decades after its release, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has aged impressively well, being another demonstration of director Steven Spielberg's fine-tuned craftsmanship and Ford commanding his old school movie star aura in a more modern era.
22. Frantic (1988)
In this late-'80s thriller from director Roman Polanski, Harrison Ford plays an American heart surgeon whose wife (Betty Buckley) vanishes in Paris. Left to his own devices, Ford combs through the City of Love with the help of a gorgeous, streetwise Parisian named Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), kicking off a discovery of darkness and intrigue he'd never thought possible. While Frantic bombed in theaters, it has since earned appreciation as a minor cult classic; Ford's performance is a standout in particular, in his portrayal of a man desperate for answers only to be left with more questions.
21. What Lies Beneath (2000)
In Robert Zemeckis' rather underrated horror blockbuster What Lies Beneath, Harrison Ford stars as a decorated scientist and college professor whose seemingly idyllic life in Vermont masks a strained marriage with his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). Suddenly, their lakeside home becomes haunted by a young woman's restless spirit whose presence threatens to unearth a terrible truth. Suspenseful and creepy in all the best ways, What Lies Beneath is bizarrely overlooked in spite of its nearly $300 million worldwide gross from its July 2000 release.
20. Morning Glory (2010)
Breaking news! You've got to watch Morning Glory, if you haven't already. This sunny rom-com from 2010 stars Rachel McAdams as an optimistic television news producer with go-getter gumption who hires industry legend Mike Pomeroy, played by Harrison Ford, to come out of retirement and help turn around her show's dwindling ratings. While Morning Glory's plastic sheen might threaten some to tune out, the film is a delight in its comical collisions of McAdams' radiant energy and Ford's cloudy grumpiness.
19. Sabrina (1995)
Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of Billy Wilder's 1954 classic inspires unfavorable comparisons. But on its own, Pollack's Sabrina - which stars Harrison Ford, opposite Julia Ormond as the titular Sabrina Fairchild - has its charms. Ormond's Sabrina is the daughter of the humble chauffeur to the affluent Larrabee family of Long Island. She harbors unrequited feelings for David Larrabee (Greg Kinnear), and after returning from a transformative sojourn in Paris, those feelings are now mutual. But while David's brother Linus (Harrison Ford) tries to falsely woo her away to encourage David to marry into better prestige, he becomes drawn to Sabrina for real. While many prefer the original to Pollack's remake, there's one thing Wilder's movie doesn't have: Harrison Ford.
18. Hanover Street (1979)
A love triangle drama in the armored shell of a World War II epic, Hanover Street features Harrison Ford as an American pilot, Lt. David Halloran, who falls in love with married British nurse Margaret (Lesley-Anne Down). As fate would have it, Halloran is given an urgent mission to escort Margaret's husband Paul (Christopher Plummer) into the heart of occupied France. After their plane goes down, the two men work together to survive while navigating their own entanglement over Margaret. While not among Ford's most popular movies, Hanover Street is a timeless gem that really lives up to the saying, "All's fair in love and war."
17. Patriot Games (1992)
A sequel to the 1990 hit The Hunt for Red October, Harrison Ford takes over from Alec Baldwin in the role of Jack Ryan, the heroic CIA analyst from Tom Clancy's best-selling espionage novels. In Patriot Games, Ford's Jack Ryan and his family become targets of the Irish Republican Army after Jack intervenes in an attempted kidnapping. While Clancy was initially displeased that then 49-year-old Ford was cast as Jack Ryan, Clancy eventually came around to Ford after watching an early cut. It may not be the single best movie in the Jack Ryan franchise, but Harrison Ford's first of two appearances in the series is solid Hollywood popcorn fare.
16. The Mosquito Coast (1986)
Harrison Ford becomes unhinged in this simmering thriller from director Peter Weir, also an adaptation of Paul Throux's 1981 novel. Harrison Ford stars as Allie Fox, a family man and inventor who has grown aggressively dissatisfied over the so-called American Dream. Believing America is done-for, Allie abruptly moves his whole family to Central America to start a new civilization. But Allie's family starts to fear him as he devolves into egomania and tyranny. Being one of Ford's few villainous roles, The Mosquito Coast is a must-see.
15. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
No time for love, Dr. Jones! Harrison Ford returns as his iconic hero in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a prequel to the mega-hit Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Steven Spielberg also returns to direct.) In Temple of Doom, Indy is asked by desperate villagers to find a magical relic and rescue the lost children taken by a bloodthirsty cult. Future Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan plays a major supporting role as Short Round, Indy's trusty sidekick. Temple of Doom was poorly reviewed upon release, but in the years since it has become a classic praised for its action sequences and overall imagination, though its ghastly racism is still uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Ford is in his absolute prime as Indy in this direct sequel/prequel.
14. 42 (2013)
In this acclaimed biopic of baseball icon Jackie Robinson, Harrison Ford co-stars as Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers executive who signs Robinson (played in the movie by the late Chadwick Boseman) to the team in 1945. Both in the movie and in real life, Rickey was key to desegregating Major League Baseball and American sports at large by signing a Black athlete like Robinson. In his portrayal of Branch Rickey, Ford imbues altogether wise altruism, pragmatism, and curmudgeonly frankness that affords the movie its hard-earned victories.
13. Air Force One (1997)
"President Harrison Ford" sure has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? In the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One, Harrison Ford leads as U.S. President James Marshall, who single-handedly stands against neo-Soviet terrorists after they hijack Air Force One mid-flight. While a movie that reframes POTUS into John McClane sounds like a dumb idea on paper, Ford's characteristically graceful-but-gruff demeanor frees Air Force One from turbulence to be as moving as it is entertaining in its dimwit escapism.
12. Working Girl (1988)
Melanie Griffith is front and center of Working Girl, a Wall Street secretary whose good ideas are routinely ignored by her superiors. Posing as her incapacitated boss (Sigourney Weaver), Griffith's Tess McGill rises the ranks of New York's financial scene, which puts her in the sightlines of businessman and romantic interest Jack Trainer, played by Harrison Ford. Although Ford isn't the main focus of Working Girl, the movie is still among his best, being a picture that condemns widespread misogyny that limits people's potential and champions shrewdness in business.
11. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
Luke Skywalker may be the hero of Star Wars, but he'd never leave Tatooine if not for Harrison Ford as the ice cool Han Solo. In the movie that kicked off the legendary Star Wars franchise, Ford famously plays the renegade smuggler and pilot Han Solo who ends up getting roped into helping Luke (Mark Hamill) on his mission to rescue Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) from the clutches of the Galactic Empire. It's simply hard to imagine Star Wars without Han Solo, and it's hard to imagine Han Solo as anyone but Harrison Ford. Only he could make being a scruffy-looking nerf herder sound like a compliment.
10. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
"Chewie, we're home." Some 40 years since he last played Han Solo, Harrison Ford returned to the Millennium Falcon in J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The long-awaited Star Wars sequel from 2015 not only renewed the Force for a new era, it also added dimensions to Han Solo as a war hero who has suffered tremendous losses – namely, the loss of his own son Ben (Adam Driver) to the Dark Side. While fans are furious over how The Force Awakens ended Han's story, it should be noted that Ford wanted Han Solo to die as far back as The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.
9. Clear and Present Danger (1994)
In Harrison Ford's second movie in the Jack Ryan series, Jack Ryan rises the ranks to become the CIA's Acting Deputy Director. That's when he uncovers an internal conspiracy within the government and its dealings with Colombian cartels, stemming from a successful assassination against an old friend of the U.S. President. While Ford isn't exactly a revelation with his performance here, Clear and Present Danger is fine-tuned Hollywood fare that is explosive and propulsive. Although Clear and Present Danger is the last movie in the Jack Ryan series to star Ford, it's easily among the franchise's best.
8. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Harrison Ford and Sean Connery only had a twelve-year age difference between the two of them. But in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the two shared dynamite chemistry in the role of Indiana Jones and Indy's father Henry Jones. In Last Crusade, Indy seeks out the Holy Grail with his estranged father, a bookish medieval professor whose obsession with finding the Grail took precedence over raising his son. While Last Crusade delivers all the goods one expects from an Indiana Jones flick, it gets its edge from its two main leads' electric pairing as bickering father and son, and a story that shows it's never too late to go on an adventure with family.
7. Presumed Innocent (1990)
Harrison Ford sure is used to maintaining his innocence. In Presumed Innocent, Ford stars as Rusty Sabich, a celebrated criminal prosecutor who enters a short-lived love affair with a beautiful colleague (Greta Scacchi). When she's found dead in her apartment, all signs point to Rusty as the guilty party. Now, Rusty is defending himself in a legal battle against all the odds. Presumed Innocent was the first of two collaborations with Ford (the second being The Devil's Own), and was among many legal thrillers that marked a boom period for the genre in Hollywood. Presumed Innocent stands out among the rest by sheer virtue of Harrison Ford in his prime.
6. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Harrison Ford doesn't show up until much later in the movie, but to say much more would spoil the fun. Without giving away too much: Ford reprises his iconic role of Rick Deckard from 1982's Blade Runner in this long-awaited, equally magnificent sequel from director Denis Villeneuve. Most of the movie follows K (Ryan Gosling), a replicant officer for the Los Angeles P.D.. Flipping the script from its predecessor, Gosling's replicant cop goes on a harrowing journey in which he believes he might be real. Ford appears late in the film, when K's search brings him to desolate Las Vegas.
5. Witness (1985)
An Amish boy is witness to the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia. That's when Harrison Ford appears as John Book, a detective who briefly takes in the child and his beautiful mother (Kelly McGillis) before the case spirals to force Book into hiding with their Amish community near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Part cop thriller, part romance, and generally part "Avatar with Amish," Witness is a mid 1980s gem that has some of Ford's single best acting of his career. The movie's explosions of urban violence are a complimentary contrast to its gorgeous montages of peaceful Amish living.
4. The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
There is simply no better response to "I love you" than "I know." In this epic sequel to the original Star Wars, Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, who is now working as a full-fledged member of the Rebel Alliance. While Luke Skywalker flies off to Dagobah to complete his Jedi training with Yoda, Solo travels the galaxy with Leia, Chewie, and C-3PO. They eventually arrive in Cloud City, where they wind up literally face-to-face with Darth Vader himself. The Empire Strikes Back is simply one of the greatest movies of all time, and Ford's Han Solo is downright aspirational in his flirtatious banter with Leia.
3. Blade Runner (1982)
Are you more human than human? Ridley Scott’s wildly influential sci-fi noir Blade Runner, itself based on a Philip K. Dick story, stars Harrison Ford as bounty hunter Rick Deckard who wrestles with existential questions amid his job hunting down lifelike androids called "replicants." While Blade Runner was a major box office bomb, its iconic profile has shaped the look and feel of science fiction media for generations. From its dismal urban sprawls, blinding neon lights, and lost souls crowded shoulder to shoulder, Blade Runner is a movie that feels as apocalyptic as it does majestic. And at the center of it all is Harrison Ford, who navigates 2017 Los Angeles like a hard boiled cop of Hollywood past.
2. The Fugitive (1993)
The Fugitive isn't the first movie about an innocent man who is accused of a heinous crime and goes on a desperate race to clear his name. It isn't even the first time that Harrison Ford played a role like this. (Hello, Presumed Innocent!) But this Andrew Davis-helmed action blockbuster, which is actually based on a TV series from 1960, ran wild all the way to the finish line. Exciting as it is exhausting, The Fugitive is easily one of Ford’s all-time greatest movies that can get you to drop the remote whenever you're channel surfing.
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Even after all these years, Raiders of the Lost Ark feels like a priceless artifact. Directed by master Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark famously stars Harrison Ford as an adventuring archaeologist who fights Nazis to stop them from obtaining the mythical Ark of the Covenant. Also starring the alluring Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, Raiders of the Lost Ark is both Spielberg's throwback to swashbuckler epics of his childhood and a sterling Hollywood blockbuster in its own right, an important release that raised the bar for summer tentpoles. Harrison Ford has had many iconic roles, but put him in a fedora and hand him a whip, and you've got the single greatest hero ever to be in the movies.
