Harrison Ford Is Secretly A Carpenter

Before Han Solo, before Indiana Jones, before any of it Harrison Ford was a carpenter. Not a hobbyist. A working, self-taught, paying-the-bills carpenter who learned his craft from books borrowed from the Encino public library because his acting career had stalled and he had a wife and two young sons to support. His clients included author Joan Didion, screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, musician Sergio Mendes, and a long list of Hollywood-adjacent homeowners who hired him through word of mouth. He built cabinets, designed a recording studio, installed doors, and put a deck on Sally Kellerman's house. He was good enough at it that when George Lucas offered him a $485-a-week part in American Graffiti, Ford asked for a $15 raise to cover what he would lose by not doing carpentry during the shoot. He was not joking.

The Star Wars story is even better. In 1975, Lucas and Brian De Palma set up a casting office in Francis Ford Coppola's studio on the Samuel Goldwyn lot to audition actors for what would become Star Wars. Lucas had told agents he wanted fresh faces, not people from American Graffiti, which Ford had already appeared in. And yet. Harrison Ford was there that day, on the job, hanging a door. Or possibly a wall panel. Accounts differ slightly. What they all agree on is that George Lucas walked in, saw Ford working, and something clicked. "I was working on an elaborate portico entrance to Francis Ford Coppola's offices when George walked in with Richard Dreyfuss for the first Star Wars interview," Ford recalled. "Somehow that rang a bell with George, and I became, eventually, Han Solo." The carpenter got the part. He has not needed his tool belt since.

Source:https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/harrison-ford-had-no-clue-he-was-auditioning-for-star-wars