I'm not a poster boy for Conservation International. I'm a working member of the board.
— Harrison Ford
Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.
It's a privilege to be able to be involved with people as talented as the people I've had the luck to work with, and it's just been a great experience for me, and I'm glad that so many of the films I've had the luck to do were films that could be enjoyed by families together.
I don't like baseball movies. I like movies about moral courage and people who are indomitable and courageous and right.
I want to go back to the Pantanal in Brazil. I've never been to sub-Saharan Africa. I'd like to take my Caravan over there and do a flying safari. I've never flown to Alaska.
I'm quite curious and excited about seeing a new script for 'Blade Runner.' If, in fact, the opportunity would exist to do another, if it's a good script, I would be very anxious to work with Ridley Scott again; he's a very talented and passionate filmmaker. And I think it would be very interesting to revisit the character.
I think 'Indiana Jones' was a lot of fun to do because of the places we went to and the adventures and the action. But Han Solo was also a huge part of my life.
J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.
I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.
I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.
What's important is to be able to see yourself, I think, as having commonality with other people and not determine, because of your good luck, that everybody is less significant, less interesting, less important than you are.
I don't do a huge amount of physical activity. I play tennis, I work out sporadically, and I eat well and take care of myself.
I think retirement's for old people. I'm still in the business, thank you. I have a young child of nine years old, and I want to live as long as I can to see him grow up. I'm enjoying my life and I want to stick around for as long as I can.
I am not the first man who wanted to make changes in his life at 60 and I won't be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity.
The third time you say a thing it sounds like a lie.
What I observed about my fellow actors was that most gave up very easily.
The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.
We're all interconnected. For example, a simple lack of fresh water can lead to population dislocation, which can lead to political radicalization, which can lead to great pressure on the states that receive refugees because of a migrating population.
I don't do celebrity endorsements. My work with Conservation International is a good use of whatever celebrity I might have to draw attention to important problems. I have the same responsibility as everyone to reduce consumption and to teach children to respect the environment.
'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change.
I'd love to do another 'Indiana Jones.' A character that has a history and a potential, kind of a rollicking good movie ride for the audience, Steven Spielberg as a director - what's not to like?
I went down to Venezuela and ended up renting a helicopter and flew with my sons to the tops of the tepuis, these freestanding jungle mesas, 'lost worlds' as it were. In fact, it's almost impossible to access them without one. So we were able to land and spend some time there. We were trapped for about six hours by clouds that came in.
The set for 'Blade Runner' was maybe the hardest set I've ever worked on because I think we worked 50 nights in a row, and it was always raining.
I don't do nostalgia. It just doesn't occur to me. I'm living in the moment, and I don't have that gene.
I think of myself as an assistant storyteller.
My approach to acting is the 'let's pretend' school of acting.
The trick of this thing and the beauty of this thing is that it's a cowboy movie first and then stuff happens. Even after stuff happens it doesn't change - it hasn't suddenly changed into another kind of movie. It's still a cowboy movie. And that's what's incredible about it because nobody has done that before, that's new territory.
I have the ordinary experience of being anonymous when I'm in an airplane talking to air-traffic control, and they don't know who they're talking to. I have a lot of common experiences.
It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.
What is news? It's hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely, and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news, except to tell you what happened overnight, and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality - a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's harder to be an educated and informed citizen.
The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.
You may get real tired watching me, but I'm not going to quit.
To me, success is choice and opportunity.
Sometimes I try to improve the language, the lines, or the delivery, but I don't ad-lib because I think that makes it really hard for everybody else involved.
We have to understand in value what the services of nature are so that we can understand that degrading them is an irreplaceable resource that no amount of money or human ingenuity can replace.
It's part of the job of the actor to torture the director.
On the first 'Indiana Jones' movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees - can't remember which knee. The scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way.
I fly myself everywhere. I like all kinds of flying, including practical flying for search and rescue. And I also like to fly into the backcountry, usually the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho. I go with a group of friends, and we set up camp for about five days and explore little dirt strips and canyons.
The original 'Star Wars' that I was a part of really was the beginning of my working life.
I actually like snakes! When I was young, I was a boy scout nature camp counselor, and one of our projects was collecting snakes and creating an environment for them, so I'm quite familiar with snakes and think they're fantastic creatures.
I retire every time I'm done with a movie. Then I go back. You know, I enjoy sleep. But I love to work; it's fun for me. As long as it continues to be fun, and I'm tolerated by the people around me, I will do it.
I am Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor.
Starring in a science-fiction film doesn't mean you have to act science fiction.
I rarely play a real person, because I don't think I'm a good imitator.
I don't mind doing interviews. I don't mind answering thoughtful questions. But I'm not thrilled about answering questions like, 'If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'
Am I grumpy? I might be. But I think maybe sometimes it's misinterpreted.
I'm like old shoes. I've never been hip. I think the reason I'm still here is that I was never enough in fashion that I had to be replaced by something new.
If you're asking me to acknowledge that I've gotten older, I can do that.
When I first started out, I was a bad actor.
The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth.
