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Harrison Ford told stunt performers to ‘leave me alone’ during Indiana Jones filming

Actor said he resisted attempts to make him seem younger as he reprised his role as the archaeologist / adventurer in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’

Isobel Lewis
Friday 02 June 2023 10:54 BST
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Harrison Ford pushed back against crew members who wanted to prevent him from looking like an “old man” as Indiana Jones.

The 80-year-old has reprised his role of the adventurous archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which will be released on 30 June. You can read The Independent’s review here.

While the film opens with a 25-minute segment featuring a digitally de-aged Ford in his younger years, the actor plays his own age in the rest of the film.

However, in a new interview, Ford recalled one moment he fought for Indy to look his age in the later timeline.

The actor was shooting a scene in which Indiana rides a horse on a New York subway platform, when he felt three stunt performers putting their hands on his legs to steady him.

“I thought, What the f***? Like I was being attacked by gropers. I look down and there’s three stunt guys there making sure I didn’t fall off the stirrup,” Ford told Esquire.

“They said, ‘Oh, we were just afraid because we thought, you know,’ and bah bah bah bah. And I said, ‘Leave me the f*** alone, I’m an old man.’”

Ford continued: “‘Leave me alone, I’m an old man getting off a horse and I want it to look like that!’”

Ford at Cannes Film Festival last month (Getty Images)

Despite the Star Wars star being keen to look his age when playing Indy in Dial of Destiny, Ford has recently defended the use of de-ageing technology in the film.

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​​“I know that that is my face,” he said, as the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month. “It’s not a kind of Photoshop magic – that’s what I looked like 35 years ago. Because Lucasfilm has every frame of film that we’ve made together over all of these years.

“This process, this scientific mining of this library, this was put to good [use]... It’s just a trick unless it’s supported by a story, and it sticks out like a sore thumb if it’s not honest, it’s not real... I mean, emotionally real. And so I think it was used very skillfully.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is released in cinemas on Friday 30 June.

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