It's a long-held belief in Hollywood that Harrison Ford is always having a terrible time and doesn't want to be wherever he is at any given moment. Doesn't really matter where it is, film premiere, interview, heck, even sometimes the actual movie he's starring in, he'd simply rather be literally anywhere else. Just watch him attempt to get through any questions about Star Wars and you'll know exactly what we mean.
His eternal grump-dom has amassed a flurry of fans ("go off king, hate us!"), but also a group who've chosen to psychoanalyse his anguish as some kind of social anxiety or aversion. But the conclusive answer? If the situation isn't fun, he's not going to pretend it is.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed “No. I don’t have a social anxiety disorder. I have an abhorrence of boring situations”, which is up there with Kim Cattrall's “I don't want to be in a situation for more than hour where I'm not enjoying myself” in terms of iconic shut-downs about a reluctance to grin-and-bear-it.
Ford's distress at seemingly having to promote anything he's in, especially in interviews, is often chalked up as the stuff of legend, a rare Hollywood entity refusing to act off the clock. But while sometimes that impertinence can feel abrasive, he's reassured that there are never any hard feelings behind his manners. “There are things I don’t love doing, but I want to be gracious about it, and I don’t want to shove it into somebody’s face that I don’t like doing it. They might be having a great time”. Whether that translates to the screen in TV interviews is up for debate, but at least the intention to be courteous is there in spirit.
He then delivered an ethos for our time, a veritable admonishment of hustle culture. “I’m just here to do my job, and my job, at the moment, is to help sell the product. This is what they really pay me for. The acting I’d do for free”. When pressed on the fact that, at his stature, he could probably just refuse to do press if he hates it that much, he said “That’s a prick. That’s wrong”.
There you have it, between Beyoncé telling us to quit our bad jobs and Harrison Ford reminding us not to give anything more than we're being paid for, burnout culture is officially unchic. We could probably all benefit from learning a thing or two from the ‘Harrison Ford School of Not Giving a F*ck’, namely that caring so much about what people think is never that beneficial and hardly ever actually goes well (just look at Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon taking possibly the most awkward red carpet photos of all time at risk of people thinking that they're a little too close).
So next time you're about to pretend you're enjoying a situation that makes you want to rip your skin off, just think WWHFD - What would Harrison Ford do? And the answer is probably frown and grumble to his heart's content and not care who sees it.
