Harrison Ford’s First Impression of ‘Star Wars’ Creator George Lucas: ‘I Didn’t Think He Could Speak’
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a young actor met a budding film director and…it was kinda awkward. Harrison Ford had a few roles under his belt by the time he joined the production of 1973’s American Graffiti, a coming-of-age teen comedy set in the summer of ’62. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola, the film’s director was a newcomer named George Lucas (who had written the script while working on his first film, a sci-fi dystopian movie called THX 1138).
Lucas and Ford would develop a lifelong friendship working on the film, which is incredible considering Harrison’s first impression of the director.
“I didn’t think he could speak. He never spoke,” Ford, 83, told Variety. “I remember there was an interview for the part that I was eventually given, and he was the only guy in the room that didn’t talk.”
Ford later realized that Lucas “didn’t like to talk very much, but he did when necessary.”
Lucas, 81, took a liking to Ford and cast him in his next film, a sci-fi adventure called Star Wars. The film made both international superstars, and they would somehow catch lightning in a bottle a third time when they worked on 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.. Lucas wrote the story, and Steven Spielberg directed the film that spawned the incredibly successful Indiana Jones franchise.
Ford and Lucas’s relationship was woven into Harrison’s role in Francis Ford Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now. “I played a character that I named myself. He wore his name proudly on his uniform. The name was L-U-C-A-S, Lucas,” Ford told Variety. “I play a very nervous guy with a funny haircut.”
“I went down to the Philippines and shot my part of it right after one of the Star Wars movies,” said Ford. “When George Lucas first saw the movie, he didn’t know the character was me, even though he was named Lucas. An Easter egg, I now understand it to be.”