Harrison Ford is one of our greatest living actors. Ford's best movies include some of the biggest film franchises ever made, and he’s the definition of a movie star. One imagines that people looking to emulate that sort of success ask him for advice all the time, but he apparently isn’t a big fan of advice, either giving it or receiving it.
In a recent appearance on NPR, Ford was asked about the best piece of advice he ever ignored, because sometimes advice is just terrible. The actor implied that he always ignored whatever advice he had been given. He indicated he hadn’t necessarily been given much, probably because he says he probably looked like somebody who wouldn’t listen to it.
On the topic of giving advice, Ford admitted he is sometimes asked for such things, and the one piece of advice that he gives isn’t about how to do things the way he did them. It’s actually about the opposite of that, with explaining…
The only thing I can say is, whatever it is you want to do, don’t imitate somebody else’s way of getting there. Don’t try and imitate somebody else’s success. You’ve got to find your own; it would be nice if you would find your own path.
This probably isn’t the sort of thing that people asking Harrison Ford for advice are looking for. Generally, when people want advice, it's to learn what worked, or what didn’t work, from somebody who has already achieved what they’re trying to achieve. This doesn’t exactly help. That said, it’s probably good advice. Simply copying what somebody else did previously isn’t necessarily as likely to work as it might at first appear.
To be fair, Ford has clearly backed up this advice. When Alden Ehrenreich took over the role of Han Solo for Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ford reportedly told him to make the role of Han Solo his own.
There are all sorts of reasons why simply following in somebody’s footsteps isn’t going to achieve the same results. Harrison Ford became a star in the 1970s, and quite a lot is different now compared to then. So what worked for him probably won’t work for somebody looking for advice in 2025.
And there’s, of course, something to be said for blazing your own trail. A lot of people have found many different roads to success, and doing things differently was probably part of the formula for a lot of them. If everybody tries to do things the same way, there’s no way to differentiate between them all.
Harrison Ford seems to be a guy who knows what he’s talking about, so I’ll take his advice, even if it mostly amounts to not taking advice.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
