Harrison Ford Landed INDIANA JONES Role After Tom Selleck Turned it Down
By Movieguide® Contributor
BLUE BLOODS star Tom Selleck missed out on playing Indiana Jones when his hit show MAGNUM, P.I. took off.
“Tom previously had done a pilot for MAGNUM, P.I. before being asked to play Indiana Jones,” Karen Allen, who played Marion Ravenwood in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK told Fox News Digital. “And when you do a pilot, you sign a contract that, if it gets picked up, you’re committed. So, they picked up the pilot. They picked up his option, and he could no longer play Indiana Jones. I was already cast as Marion, but we still had no Indiana Jones.”
“Tom wasn’t just considered; he was cast initially,” she revealed. “He had the role. I have run into him several times since then…I think one of the great regrets of his career is not having the chance to play Indiana Jones.”
IGN reported, “Selleck turned the role down, out of a commitment to his TV show, though an actors’ strike would ultimately delay production on his show that year so that he, as it turned out, would have had time to shoot RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.”
However, IGN noted that Steven Spielberg pushed to cast Harrison Ford shortly after Selleck turned down the role.
“Of course, they knew him very well from the STAR WARS films,” Allen said. “George Lucas was also working on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I don’t think Harrison was the most obvious choice because he was already doing the STAR WARS films. And perhaps they thought viewers would see Han Solo, not Indiana Jones, on the screen. It didn’t seem possible. But it worked out. He was able to do both quite brilliantly.”
Despite not being the first choice, Ford’s performance as Indiana Jones became iconic.
“My initial impression was that we came from very different backgrounds,” Allen described. “I was coming from years of working in the theater. I was very used to rehearsing, and I loved working with other actors on scenes. Harrison very much liked to work in a more solitary way. Some actors like to work on their lines in their hotel rooms before they come on set…I knew I was going to be working with someone who did things very differently from me.”
“We were together for, gosh, I think four months straight just shooting,” she continued. “We had a lot of fun together. The differences never got in our way. I made an adjustment to work on my own for the first time, which was a skill I hadn’t developed before. I don’t think I ever worked with anyone who didn’t just dive into rehearsing first. Theater actors are just dying to play around the scenes, rehearse and improvise. He didn’t have any interest in doing that at all. He would stay in his dressing room or hotel room, study his lines and come prepared. That was his way as an actor.”
The INDIANA JONES franchise took off after RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK became an Oscar-nominated film. Since then, four more INDIANA JONES films have been created, the most recent being INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, which came out last summer. It made $174,480,468 domestically, the sixteenth highest-grossing movie of the year.
Movieguide® previously reported Ford’s thoughts after Selleck couldn’t play the role:
“How I got the job? Tom Selleck had the job, but he also incurred an obligation to do a television series and he was unable to get out of that contract,” Ford told Deadline. “I became the second choice, and I’m very grateful for Tom. Thank you, Tom, man. If you’re listening, thank you again.”
Ford then described his exchange with creator George Lucas. Lucas sent Ford a script for the first Indiana Jones film straight to Ford’s house.
“He said ‘I want you to read it right away, I want you to read it in an hour.’ I sat down, I read it in an hour, and he said ‘I want you to go over to Steven Spielberg’s house and talk to him,’ ” Ford told PEOPLE. “I went to Steven Spielberg’s house, I had never met Steven Spielberg before. I guess about an hour later I had the job.”
“Pretty hot out for a leather jacket, and a heavy felt hat, and he was an archeologist and he was a professor, and what more would you need to know as an actor?” Ford added. “This is a guy who carries a whip. You know what that means.”
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