{"id":81830,"date":"2025-08-21T05:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T05:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/81830\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T05:05:08","slug":"the-iconic-role-harrison-ford-didnt-get-because-he-wasnt-short-or-homely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/81830\/","title":{"rendered":"The iconic role Harrison Ford didn’t get because he wasn’t “short or homely”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Harrison<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Wed 20 August 2025 18:45, UK <\/p>\n

The hardest part of an actor\u2019s career is always the start, unless they land a star-making part right out of the gate. Harrison Ford<\/a> didn\u2019t find one of those until he\u2019d been working for a decade, but it wasn\u2019t from a lack of trying.<\/p>\n

If there was one person most likely to thwart Ford\u2019s ascent to stardom, it was Ford. Even though he was a measly contract player during those formative years, he still had no issues standing his ground against people several rungs higher up the industry ladder, which didn\u2019t do him any favours<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, his fledgling filmography was almost ended before it began when he made an enemy of a studio vice-president, which was one of the reasons why his early credits were so forgettable. However, things could have changed in an instant had he not bombed two auditions for a game-changing role.<\/p>\n

When an adaptation of Charles Webb\u2019s The Graduate first entered development in the mid-1960s, Benjamin Braddock instantly became one of Hollywood\u2019s most coveted characters. Every performer in a certain age range knew it was a big deal, and the casting race was incredibly heated from the beginning.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, Robert Redford was eliminated from consideration because he was too handsome and had too much of a ladies\u2019 man reputation<\/a> to convince as the nebbish protagonist, and Ford ticked several of the same telegenic boxes. The major difference was that he was still a complete unknown, which potentially stood him in good stead.<\/p>\n

At the time, Ford\u2019s entire list of credits comprised two uncredited parts in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round and Luv, and his only credited role thus far, albeit as Harrison J Ford, in A Time for Killing. Still, Walter Beakel, the head of Columbia Pictures\u2019 talent development programme, thought he was perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe role as it was originally written was more Harrison Ford in life than anybody I knew,\u201d he said. Evidently, Mike Nichols and the casting agents in charge of hiring The Graduate\u2018s ensemble cast disagreed because he didn\u2019t only fail one audition, he bombed two of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t do too well,\u201d Beakel acknowledged. \u201cHe was young and he did not quite have the confident to execute an audition.\u201d As everyone knows, Braddock was ultimately played by Dustin Hoffman, who earned an Academy Award nomination for \u2018Best Actor\u2019 and launched himself toward the A-list on the back of the film, which won Nichols the Oscar for \u2018Best Director\u2019.<\/p>\n

It epitomised a shift in attitudes towards above-the-title stars, with the \u2018New Hollywood\u2019 generation favouring everymen with impeccable acting abilities over those who looked like they belonged on the marquee. \u201cHis type was out of style,\u201d Beakel explained. \u201cHarrison was a young leading man. The problem was that he was not off the wall, and he was not short and homely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Short and homely, he certainly wasn\u2019t, and it would be another decade<\/a> before Star Wars finally turned the failed Graduate auditionee into a hot commodity.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Wed 20 August 2025 18:45, UK The hardest part of an actor\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,20346,2839,35693,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-81830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-harrison-ford","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-the-graduate","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}