Ford was born on Monday, July 13, 1942. His mother, Dorothy (née Dora Nidelman), was a homemaker and former radio actress; his father, Christopher Ford (né John William Ford), was an advertising executive and also a former actor. Harrison Ford's maternal grandparents, Anna Lifschutz and Harry Nidelman, were Jewish immigrants from Minsk, Russia. His paternal grandparents, Florence Veronica Niehaus and John Fitzgerald Ford, were of German and Irish Catholic descent, respectively. When asked in which religion he was raised, Ford jokingly responded, "Democrat". He has also said that he feels "Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor".Ford was active in the Boy Scouts of America, and achieved its second-highest rank, Life Scout. He worked at a Scout camp as a counselor for the Reptile Study merit badge. Because of this, he and director Steven Spielberg later decided that the character of young Indiana Jones would be depicted as a Life Scout in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They also jokingly reversed Ford's knowledge of reptiles into Jones's fear of snakes.
In 1960, Ford graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH-FM, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year, 1959–1960. The radio room still bears his graffiti. He attended Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. He took a drama class in his junior year, chiefly as a way to meet women. Ford, a self-described "late bloomer", became fascinated with acting. Towards the end of his freshman year, he was a member of a folk band called The Brothers Gross; he played gutbucket. Ford did not graduate.
Ford is one of Hollywood's most notoriously private actors, zealously guarding his personal life. He has two sons (Willard and Benjamin) with his first wife, Mary Marquardt, as well as two children (Malcolm and Georgia) with his second wife, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, and he is currently (as of 2002) engaged to Calista Flockhart who has an adopted son, Liam. Flockhart is 22 years younger than Ford.
In June, 1983 at the age of 40, during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in London, he herniated a disc in his back, resulting in him flying back to Los Angeles for an operation and returning to work just over six weeks later.
Quick Info
Born July 13, 1942, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Spouse(s)
- Mary Marquardt (1964–1979) (divorced)
- Melissa Mathison (1983–2004) (divorced)
Comments