Harrison Ford's rugged features and physical presence have enhanced some of Hollywood's most successful blockbusters of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. In total, Ford's films have grossed more than $3 billion, making him one of the biggest box-office draws ever. Under contract first to Columbia and then to Universal during the 60s, the admitted perfectionist opted out of the business and turned to carpentry, acting only occasionally before appearing as a drag racer in George Lucas' "American Graffiti" (1973).

He shot to fame as the arrogant but good-humored space pilot Han Solo in Lucas' "Star Wars" (1977), and his star shone even brighter in "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), the second installment of the trilogy. Ford established himself as a leading international romantic star as the swashbuckling archeologist of Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) and the subsequent "Indiana Jones" chronicles. Cult movie fans loved his cynical, android-killing cop in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982), although Ford himself felt less than a full partner in the collaboration. He exhibited a wider emotional range in Peter Weir's "Witness" (1985) as a police detective forced to take refuge from murderous colleagues in an Amish community, earning an Oscar nomination as Best Actor. Ford followed that up with a very ambitious performance in Weir's somewhat problematic "The Mosquito Coast" (1986), one of his few box-office failures.

Thereafter, Ford settled into a comfortable box-office plateau for the rest of the 80s and on into the 90s. He teamed up with Sean Connery to reprise Dr Jones in Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989) and played a series of intelligent, beleaguered professionals in a variety of mainstream romantic and action films, epitomizing the ordinary guy who finds himself in extraordinary situations. If his earlier tongue-in-cheek qualities were largely absent, his stalwart image nonetheless provided a reliable anchor whose rueful quality evoked Humphrey Bogart and whose troubled stoicism called to mind Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck. Ford was outshone by his more vivacious co-stars in Mike Nichols' romantic comedy "Working Girl" (1988) but provided the tense emotional core for Roman Polanski's "Frantic" (1988) and "Presumed Innocent" (1990). He found yet another franchise assuming the role of Jack Ryan from Alec Baldwin in "Patriot Games" (1992) and its sequel "Clear and Present Danger" (1994). "The Fugitive" and "Air Force One" (1997) were superior if straightforward genre fare. The ruggedly handsome actor was badly miscast in the Bogart role of Sydney Pollack's unnecessary remake of "Sabrina" (1995), although "Regarding Henry" (1991, another Nichols film) offered him his best chance since "Witness" to explore the more vulnerable side of his star persona as a brusque lawyer turned into a childlike innocent by a gunshot wound to the head.

While in NYC filming "The Devil's Own" (1997), opposite Brad Pitt, Ford carelessly let down his guard and allowed tabloid hounds to catch his scent "having too much fun". He endured the resultant smears and suffered the talk show circuit, but the experience hardly made the intensely private and reticent actor any more disposed to the press. He has always granted interviews, not because he liked doing them, but because he recognized them as integral to the business of marketing his films, and no other actor in the history of films has a better track record. With seven of the 20 top-box-office movies of all time, the National Association of Theater Owners recognized him in 1994 as the "Star of the Century" and the American Film Institute bestowed upon him its Life Achievement Award in 2000.

The huge success of the re-released "Star Wars" trilogy in 1997 only underscored the tremendous box-office appeal of this uniquely durable star, although the non-cliffhanger movies he made in his 50s were not as popular or successful as his action films. Moviegoers stayed away from clunkers like the uninspired, critically panned adventure/romance "Six Days, Seven Nights" (1998), which, like "Working Girl" and "Sabrina", paired him with a much younger leading lady–Anne Heche was nearly half his age. Likewise, few people turned out to see "Random Hearts" (1999), a Sydney Pollack drama in which Ford played a widower cop obsessed with learning the details of his dead wife's affair with a Congresswoman's husband. Hopes ran higher for his teaming with Michelle Pfeiffer as a married couple literally haunted by a young woman in the thriller "What Lies Beneath" (2000). The film was a moderate success, with many critics charging that the plot and the fright techniques employed by the movie were exceedingly formulaic. Ford next resurfaced in the 2002's dramatic thriller, "K-19: The Widowmaker." The film was the true story of Russia's first nuclear submarine and Ford played the valiant Russian captain of the ship. Again, Ford found himself with a lackluster showing both with critics and at the box office. It was perhaps this latest in a string of proefessional disappointments that led Ford to announce in 2002 that he would finally return to his best known role in the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, with Steven Spielberg directing and Frank Darabount crafting the screenplay. Shortly thereafter, the famously publicity shy and reticent Ford–who had split with his wife, screenwriter Melissa Matheson in 2001–went public with his much-speculated-about May-December romance with actress Calista Flockhart, and the couple soon became fixtures on the Hollywood scene.

The following year Ford and up-and-coming actor Josh Hartnett teamed up for the Ron Shelton feature, "Hollywood Homicide," which paired them as generationally mismatched L.A. detectives, each with offbeat jobs on the side. Although Ford–an avid avoider of personal publicity–stumped mightily to promote the film, which was positioned to return him to an audience-pleasing leading man role, the distinct lack of genuine comic spark in the film and the lack of chemistry with Hartnett disappointed critics and summer moviegoers.