The Day Harrison Ford Snapped and Tried to Trash the Set
Harrison Ford is famous for being a skilled carpenter, but he once used those talents in a very scary way while filming Star Wars.
Before he became a superstar, he worked as a professional carpenter to make extra money. This meant he knew exactly how to use tools, which made a specific outburst on the movie set quite dangerous for the production.
According to his co-star Mark Hamill, Ford once got so angry during the filming of the first movie that he tried to physically destroy the Millennium Falcon. The famous spaceship set was actually made of wood, and Ford decided to take a saw to it. Hamill remembered people running up to him in a panic and asking him to intervene before the set was ruined.
Hamill shared the story by saying, You heard about Harrison taking a saw to the Millennium Falcon because he got so mad? People were coming up to me going, ‘You’ve gotta stop Harrison, he’s sawing up the Falcon!’ It was made of wood and he just took a saw to it. I love Harrison. While the reason for his anger was never revealed, it was clear that the actor had reached his breaking point.
Even though he is legendary for playing Han Solo, Ford has often had a complicated relationship with the franchise. He does not like being asked questions about the movies decades later. This early moment of rage shows that things were not always easy behind the scenes of the original trilogy.
Many years later, Ford returned to the same spaceship for the movie The Force Awakens. In a strange twist of luck, a heavy hydraulic door on the set fell and crushed his leg. He ended up with a serious injury that required a long recovery. Some fans joked that the spaceship finally got its revenge after he tried to saw it into pieces thirty years earlier.
It is lucky that Mark Hamill was there to talk his friend down before the ship was turned into sawdust. If Ford had finished what he started, the crew would have had to rebuild the most iconic set in movie history from scratch. From that point on, the crew probably made sure to keep all the construction tools far away from the lead actor.
It is pretty funny to imagine one of the world’s biggest actors losing his cool and acting like a frustrated handyman. Most stars might just yell or walk off the set, but Ford actually knew how to dismantle the scenery. It shows that he has always been a very hands-on person, even when he is having a bad day.
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