The word “franchise” is now familiar to fans of Harrison Ford, with multiple visits to the same characters in the “Star Wars,” Indiana Jones, “Blade Runner” and Jack Ryan (this must be some sort of record in franchise-starring).
In between, Ford got to exercise his acting muscles in such non-franchise films as “42,” “The Fugitive,” “The Mosquito Coast,” “Working Girl,” “Air Force One,” and of course “Witness,” the only movie to bring him an Oscar nomination. He has received other honors, including the American Film Institute life achievement award and the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes.
We’ve collected 15 of Ford’s best films and ranked them from worst to first, including the ones mentioned above. Tour our photo gallery and see if you agree or disagree with our choices.
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15. AIR FORCE ONE (1997)
Image Credit: Columbia Tri Star/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Wolfgang Petersen. Writer: Andrew W. Marlowe. Starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Wendy Crewson, William H. Macy.
One of the most popular action films of the ’90s, “Air Force One” stars Ford as Jim Marshall, President of the United States, who is flying on Air Force One with his family when the Presidential plane is hijacked by a group of Kazakh terrorists, led by Korshunov (Gary Oldman), who board the plane while posing as members of the press corps. Once the guns come out, Ford must switch from Presidential mode to superhero move, driven to protect his family and those innocents on the Presidential aircraft. When Ford is in superhero mode, he’s one of the best, and Wolfgang Petersen’s taut direction makes it all the more effective.
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14. SABRINA (1995)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Sydney Pollack. Writers: Barbara Benedek, David Rayfiel. Starring Harrison Ford, Julia Ormand, Greg Kinnear.
Ford tries his hand at sophisticated romantic comedy in Sydney Pollack’s remake of the 1954 Billy Wilder classic. Here he plays rich businessman Linus Larrabee whose younger playboy brother David (Greg Kinnear) is starting to fall for their chauffeur’s daughter Sabrina (Julia Ormond), despite being engaged to another wealthy woman whose family fortune the Larrabee family will need to keep the family business afloat. But Linus, against his better judgement, finds he harbors a secret love for Sabrina as well. For his performance as Linus, Ford received his fourth Golden Globe nomination.
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13. REGARDING HENRY (1991)
Image Credit: SNAP/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mike Nichols. Writer: J.J. Abrams. Starring Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Mikki Allen.
Here Ford portrays Henry Turner, a high-powered Manhattan lawyer, who wanders into a convenience store robbery one night and is shot in the head. Henry survives but suffers brain damage and retrograde amnesia, making everything around him that he knew and loved now seem strange and foreign. Ford’s major acting challenge here is to create a man who was once forceful and articulate but now is struggling to find the words to say what he needs to say. Where as once, his major concern was winning a big case, but now his only concern is trying to get some semblance of the life he once loved back.
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12. WHAT LIES BENEATH (2000)
Image Credit: Francois Duhamel/Image Movers/Dreamworks/Amblin/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Robert Zemeckis. Writer: Clark Gregg. Starring Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer, Diana Scarwid.
“What Lies Beneath” is a rare bird in the Harrison Ford filmography — it’s Ford’s first foray into the horror genre and (for a very big change) he’s not exactly playing a nice guy. But the public responded, as the film earned more than $291 million at the worldwide box office. Ford is Dr. Norman Spencer, a scientist at a Vermont college who is obsessed with his work and has a contentious relationship with his wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer). When Claire encounters Mary, the sobbing wife who lives next door who is afraid that she’s going to “disappear,” Claire becomes suspicious when she sees Mary’s husband dumping what looks like a body into his car’s trunk. Claire’s suspicions rile Norman even more, and nothing good happens to the Spencers because of it.
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11. THE MOSQUITO COAST (1986)
Image Credit: Saul Zaentz Company/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Peter Weir. Writer: Paul Schrader. Starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Martha Plimpton.
Ford’s first role post-“Witness” was this Paul Schrader adaptation of the Paul Theroux novel. Under Peter Weir’s direction, Ford gives a powerful performance as Allie Fox, who, sick of American consumerism and fearful of a nuclear war, packs up his family and moves to what he hopes will be a simpler life in the jungles of Central America. But their dreams of a happier life there begin to diminish as Allie begins to show signs of erratic behavior that worries his family greatly. Suddenly to those so close to him, Allie is much more terrifying than the jungle that surrounds them. For his performance as Allie, Ford received his second Golden Globe nomination.
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10. THE JACK RYAN series (1992, 1994)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Phillip Noyce. Writers: Various. Starring Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Thora Birch.
Ford appears as the famed Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan in the second and third episodes of the espionage film series — “Patriot Games” (1992) and “Clear and Present Danger” (1994). In the five-episode series, Ford is the only actor who has appeared twice as Jack Ryan. (For the record, the other Ryans were Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine.) Directed in both films by ace Australian director Phillip Noyce, Ford was right in his wheelhouse with the Tom Clancy character, who is stoic on the outside and not prone to the use of violence, but when he is threatened, look out. Two of the better films in the series.
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9. WORKING GIRL (1988)
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Mike Nichols. Writer: Kevin Wade. Starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack.
In one of Ford’s biggest non-franchise hits, he plays Jack Trainer, a financial executive at the stock brokerage where secretary Tess McGill also works under the yoke of her monstrous boss Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). When Katharine breaks her leg in a skiing accident, she asks Tess to house sit. There Tess finds some very incriminating evidence against Katharine, which she brings to Jack that triggers a series of events that could have dire consequences to Tess. All the plum parts in Mike Nichols’ film go to the women (and they make the most of them), but Ford displays a steady hand here, being the center of of sanity in the midst of workplace chaos.
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8. STAR WARS: EPISODE VII — THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm/Bad Robot/Walt Disney Studios/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: J.J. Abrams. Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, J.J.Abrams, Michael Arndt. Starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher.
Thirty-two years after his last appearance in a “Star Wars” film, Ford returned in “The Force Awakens” along with his former co-star Carrie Fisher. Seeing Ford again as Han Solo, piloting along with Chewbacca, was the the film equivalent of comfort food. More importantly, placing Han Solo and (the once) Princess Leia interacting with the new characters in this round of “Star Wars” somehow gives the younger characters the gravitas that convinced me that they belong in the “Star Wars” universe. And Ford’s final scenes only serve as a reminder (as if we needed it) of what a remarkable creation his Han Solo truly is.
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7. 42 (2013)
Image Credit: Legendary Pictures/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Writer/Director: Brian Helgeland. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Alan Tudyk, Christopher Meloni, Nicole Beharie.
In writer/director Brian Helgeland’s biopic of baseball legend Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), Ford takes on a rare character role as grizzled, cigar-chomping baseball executive who not only wanted to integrate baseball with an African-American, but he specifically wanted this African-American to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. Ford is virtually unrecognizable in the role, as he uses his physicality to suggest the man we’re watching is aging. It isn’t until Ford opens his mouth and we hear that familiar voice that we realize that it is really Ford underneath all that grizzle.
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6. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm/Coppola Co/Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: George Lucas. Writers: George Lucas, Gloria Katz, Willard Huyck. Starring Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Richard Dreyfuss, Candy Clark, Harrison Ford.
Though Ford had small roles in six prior features. George Lucas’ classic “American Graffiti” was the first time audiences were formally introduced to him. As arrogant cowboy drag racer Bob Falfa, Ford cruised the streets of Modesto seeking out good-guy drag racer John Milner (Paul Le Mat), instigating the film’s exciting drag race finale. Ford didn’t have a whole lot of dialogue in the film, but he did have a smoulderingly sexy presence behind the wheel, which, combined with Bob’s arrogant confidence, made him unforgettable. Perhaps George Lucas remembered that when he was casting “Star Wars.”
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5. THE FUGITIVE (1993)
Image Credit: Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Andrew Davis. Writers: David Twohy, Jeb Stuart. Starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward.
One of Ford’s most critically acclaimed films ever, Andrew Davis’ thriller based on the iconic TV series starring David Janssen, stars Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, an esteemed vascular surgeon, who returns home to find his wife has just been murdered by a one-armed man, a killer who, after a struggle, escapes. Due to circumstances, Dr. Kimble is convicted of first-degree murder, but en route to prison, he manages to escape. As Dr. Kimble vows to track down the one-armed man, Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones, who won an Oscar for his performance) is on a mission to track down Kimble. Ford and Jones are formidable opponents, and for his performance as Dr. Kimble, Ford received his third Golden Globe nomination.
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4. BLADE RUNNER (1982)
Image Credit: Ladd Company/Warner Bros/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Director: Ridley Scott. Writers: Hampton Fancher, David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos.
While now Ridley Scott’s film is considered a modern classic, when it was originally released in 1982, “Blade Runner” opened to mixed critical reviews and was generally considered to be a box-office flop. Time has been kind to this sci-fi milestone, which is set in the distant future of 2019 (wait, huh?) Los Angeles, where it’s always raining (as if), hovercraft fly through the air and electronic ads cover the entire side of buildings. And Ford’s performance as ex-police officer Rick Deckard, whose job it was to be a blade runner, a hunter of bioengineered beings called replicants, is treasured by sci-fi fans all over the world.
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3. THE INDIANA JONES series (1981, 1984, 1989, 2008, 2023)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Directors: Steven Spielberg, James Mangold. Writers: Various. Starring Harrison Ford.
Like the first “Star Wars,” when “Raiders of the Lost Ark” first appeared in 1981, it took moviegoers completely by surprise. Here was an old-fashioned Saturday-afternoon-at-the- movies adventure serial all gussied up and pushed to its max by director Steven Spielberg. Now remember, at this time, the public only really knew Ford as Han Solo, and now they were faced with him as Indiana Jones, a totally different character, complete with fedora and a bullwhip. Ford played Indiana Jones as an everyman, facing dire consequences at every turn and somehow finding a way out. Ford kept up the character in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” whose violence led to the PG-13 rating; “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) which paired him with Sean Connery as his father; and a late entry in the series, “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” (2008). The most recent (and likely final) movie is “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (2023).
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2. WITNESS (1985)
Image Credit: Moviestore Collection/REX/Shutterstock Director: Peter Weir. Writers: Earl W. Wallace, William Kelley. Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lucas Haas, Alexander Gudunov.
In what may be arguably Ford’s best performance on-screen, he portrays Det. John Book, who, during his investigation of the murder of an undercover cop, finds that there’s a witness to the crime, 8 year-old Amish boy Samuel Lapp, who saw the murder while waiting on a train platform with his mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis). Fearing for their safety, John decides to escort them back to Amish country, only to be tailed by the real killer, who wounds Book in an ambush. The Amish people take him into their community and vow to protect him. For his performance as Det. John Book, Ford received his sole Oscar nomination (to date) and his third Golden Globe nod.
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1. THE STAR WARS series (1977, 1980, 1983)
Image Credit: Lucasfilm/Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock Directors: Various. Writers: Various. Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford.
I remember the first time I saw George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in the spring of 1977. Somehow I wangled tickets to a preview screening. There were no reviews yet, and its story was not yet known. My jaw was on the floor through most of the film. Though I had a whole lot of takeaways from it, my biggest one was that it was fun and reveled in the joy of filmmaking. Director Irvin Kerchner deepened the story in “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), and Richard Marquand continued the streak with “Return of the Jedi (1983) (Ewoks aside). But it was those glorious characters — Mark Hamill’s Luke, Carrie Fisher’s Leia, and most of all, Ford’s Han Solo, who made us all happy that there were swashbucklers in space. A series that is not to be denied.