Is Harrison Ford a good actor?

I particularly liked him in:
Blade Runner
Presumed Innocent
Patriot Games
The Fugitive
Raiders of the Lost Ark
What Lies Beneath
and
Witness.

He's one of those actors that I'm willing to check out any movie he makes. Is he the guy that wins Best Actor...no...but most of the time he hits the mark with his character.
 
Kdawg your right, I just saw a take where they talked about how Lucas and Speilburg ran a ton of test and found that men really like him more than anybody else they tested in front of mock audiences. Women love him but for some reason men can believe him in the role and this is supposedly why they went with him for Starwars.

I guess they were right because over the years he's pulled in a much wider audience than most male actors. The actors that men usually love in action movies women don't go see. They love Ford and most of us men find him tolerable or like him.

I think that some of his acting is really good and like all actors that have to do so many movies under contract, it's they can suffer from time constraits on finding good scripts. But he sees a lot of scripts.
 
c.g._eads said:
I just realized that outside of Indiana Jones (or I should say the first 3 Indiana Jones) and Star Wars, Ford has been terrible about 90% of the time. Even in his "good" roles (like "Witness") he's so understated as to make you wonder if he wasn't just playing his own boring self. In movies like Sabrina, Random Hearts, Firewall, Hollywood Homicide, and Indiana Jones 4, he's been absolutely dreadful. Have we been fooled this whole time? Was the wool pulled over our eyes this whole time because of Han Solo and Indiana Jones??
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The fact that you didn't mention Blade Runner makes me lose a great deal of respect for your argument. Actors that are amazing are usually slightly off their rockers. I think Harrison Ford is about as good as you can get while still being sane. hahaha

blade-runner-1982-harrison-ford-pic-4.jpg
 
If I were to bring up Blade Runner, I'd actually use it as an argument against his acting. I thought he was pretty boring in that movie. But I respect people's love for that film so decided against bringing it up.
 
Aaron Marshall said:
Actors that are amazing are usually slightly off their rockers. I think Harrison Ford is about as good as you can get while still being sane.
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Harrison Ford is a pretty sane-seeming guy, particularly for an actor. On Air Force One he was totally laid back, and seemed to enjoy spending his time hanging out with the carpenters.
 
I think Harrison Ford shows quite a bit of talent for acting in his audition readings for Star Wars when he reads with other actors.

like here ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv6jQvzpG0w

Taking dialog and making it sound natural isn't easy and you can either be very good at faking it or, I think what is more of Harrison's approach, read dialog with a more natural spontaneity of just letting it fall off of your cuff. I think he's one of those actors that goes in and tries to keep it real rather than aggrandising his acting into something larger than life.
 
Harrison Ford is great in The Mosquito Coast. It's his favorite role but also the film that failed to connect with critics and the audience. He's a bit of a victim of his own success. I love Mosquito Coast and check it out if you haven't seen it, he totally disappears into that role.

And, I think only a really good actor could make George Lucas's terrible dialogue sound good. The Jones films are great because he has the ability to take this material that's very camp and make it work. He's really good at blending comedy and drama and switching betweem them both, very few actors can do both well.
 
Mosquito Coast may be one of the best films that completely failed to grab my interest.

It probably is Ford's most unique performance, though.

There probably ought to be a special Oscartm for actors who can make Lucas' dialog sound halfway not-awful...
 
Sad Max said:
Things like, the basic goodness of the world, the presence of justice and truth, and the existence of a merciful deity...?
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Something like that... (I'd usually put a smiley of some sort after this kind of a comment, but somehow I just can't muster one)
 
John Froton said:
I think Harrison Ford shows quite a bit of talent for acting in his audition readings for Star Wars when he reads with other actors.

like here ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv6jQvzpG0w

Taking dialog and making it sound natural isn't easy and you can either be very good at faking it or, I think what is more of Harrison's approach, read dialog with a more natural spontaneity of just letting it fall off of your cuff. I think he's one of those actors that goes in and tries to keep it real rather than aggrandising his acting into something larger than life.
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Was that Robby Benson ? He's almost as much a Nancy as the real Luke.
 
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