As a legendary adventure movie actor, Harrison Ford has been involved in his fair share of scrapes on-screen: from being frozen in carbonite and later murdered by his own son in Star Wars, to having to out-run comically large boulders and avoid pits of snakes in the Indiana Jones movies.
He’s just as adventurous in real life as he is of-screen. After hitting the big-time as a movie star, Ford got his airline pilot license at the age of 53, and has even conducted his fair share of voluntary rescue missions in his own helicopter. But when it comes to perilous emergency landings, such as the one Captain Sullivan had to do in 2009, the actor draws a line.
With Ford turning 80 earlier this week, a 2015 interview with talk-show host Conan O’Brian went viral on Twitter, as the actor admitted that if he found himself in a situation like Sully’s he would simply “shit and die.” To be fair, you can’t blame him. I’d probably also shit myself and scromit (scream and vomit) if faced with that kind of danger.
“Happy 80th Harrison Ford, who gave one of my all-time favourite talk show answers, when Conan asked him what he’d do in a Sully-style forced landing situation,” the viral tweet read.
happy 80th Harrison Ford, who gave one of my all time favourite talk show answers, when Conan asked him what he'd do in a Sully-style forced landing situation pic.twitter.com/0pbbENy8pT
— chris (@yrpalchris) July 13, 2022
Although Ford himself wasn’t in Sully, the drama movie based on the emergency landing starring Tom Hanks, he was instrumental in getting the film made. As part of a roundtable with the Hollywood Reporter, producer Frank Marshall revealed that it was Ford who put him in touch with Sully, as the latter asked Ford whether his story would make a good movie as part of a White House dinner for heroes in aviation.
“He gave Sully my phone number, and that’s how it all started,” Marshall said. “I went to the publisher in Beverly Hills, and there’s Sully, and I’m awed by this man, and he trusted Harrison and he trusted me, and he said, ‘OK, I’m going to give you the rights.'”
You can catch Ford in Indiana Jones 5, coming to theatres June 30, 2023.