t the end of cinemas first hundred years, one man stands alone and unchallenged
as its most successful box office star. Ruggedly resolute, an all-American
everyman. Harrison Ford has delivered a brand of heroism unseen since the days
of Gary Cooper, and unmatched by any of his modern-day rivals. Like so many of
his screen creations, the real Harrison Ford combines strength with silence and
draws a veil over the life he lives far from the flashgun glare of Hollywood.
Now, for the first time, he is laid bare in all his compelling complexities.
Drawing on more than a hundred interviews, with family and friends, colleagues
and contemporaries, and with Harrison Ford himself, Garry Jenkins has built up
the first complete portrait of the screens ultimate hero. It is an absorbing
story, filled with new and revealing detail. Jenkins describes the troubled,
often tortured early years of the uncompromising, midwestern misfit most knew as
plain Harry Ford and chronicles the brutal treatment meted out to him when he
took his place within the fading Hollywood star system. He records the backstage
battles Ford fought even after success had transformed his life and offers fresh
glimpses behind the scenes of films such as American Graffiti, Star Wars,
Witness, and the Indiana Jones adventures. And he shines new light on the women
who have shared Fords life, on the painful marriage break-up that blighted his
belated success, and the second chance he has determined to take. This is the
story of a flawed and fallible hero, a man scarred yet strengthened by his
experiences: Hollywoods imperfect hero as he has never been seen before.