In the course of his long career, Harrison Ford has played an archaeologist action hero, an outer space rebel, and a police officer in a dystopian future. And while he dozens of fictional characters on his resume, back in 2015, he wanted to make it crystal clear to a then-presidential hopeful that his movie roles are just that: fiction. When Donald Trump told the press that he's a fan of Ford's 1997 film Air Force One and the president the star plays, the famously dry actor weighed in.
Read on to find out what Ford and Trump had to say about each other and for another way in which the former president ran afoul of the people who made Air Force One.
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Trump named Air Force One as one of his favorite presidential movies.
In Air Force One, Ford plays a president who springs into action when his plane is hijacked by terrorists. Speaking to The New York Times for a December 2015 article, Trump said he was a fan of films with heroic presidents and highlighted Air Force One in particular.
"My favorite was Harrison Ford on the plane," Trump said. "I love Harrison Ford—and not just because he rents my properties. He stood up for America."
The New York Times noted that, at the time, "Mr. Ford, a lifelong Democrat, declined to comment."
As for Ford renting Trump's properties, Curbed reported in 2022 that Ford was one of several celebrities to rent or own a property in New York City's Trump World Tower—which Trump does not own—in the '90s or '00s.
Ford responded to Trump directly.
Studio 10 / YouTubeNot long after that article was published, Ford was asked about Trump's love of Air Force One when he was promoting Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
"It’s a movie," Ford told Studio 10. Then, he looked directed into the camera and said, "Donald, it was a movie. It’s not like this in real life, but how would you know?"
Ford also sarcastically called him "the beloved Donald Trump" and joked that he thought Trump was running for "resident" of the United States, not president.
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Trump faced more Air Force One-related backlash.
Joseph Sohm / ShutterstockAccording to a July 2016 Hollywood Reporter piece, Trump was asked to stop using music from Air Force One at his campaign events. Gail Katz, one of the movie's producers, told the outlet that she wrote a letter to Trump's campaign demanding that they cease using the score. She also said that he never asked permission in the first place.
"The music for Air Force One was composed and conducted by the legendary Oscar-winning film composer Jerry Goldsmith," Katz wrote in the letter. "Jerry’s music was hijacked in a misguided attempt to associate Trump with the film and the President in that film."
Additionally, Richard Kraft, who had been Goldsmith's agent prior to his 2004 death, told THR, "From everything I know about Jerry Goldsmith’s political views, he would have been extremely unhappy with Trump co-opting his art to sell his image. Goldsmith composed music to underscore a make-believe, heroic president in [Air Force One], not to help create a phony soundtrack for Trump. He would have been appalled to have his music selling a product he would greatly dislike."
Ford slammed Trump on other occasions.
Warning: Explicit language in video above.
In 2020, Jimmy Kimmel showed Ford a fake poster with quotes from Trump that made it seem as though the former president called Ford's new movie The Call of the Wild "a perfect call." (This was a reference to Trump's infamous qualification of a phone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.)
"That’s the first thing that son of a [expletive] has done for me—ever," Ford joked on Kimmel's show.
Per THR, Ford also spoke out against Trump during a 2019 speech about climate change at the World Government Summit.
"Around the world, elements of leadership—including in my own country—to preserve their state and the status quo, deny or denigrate science," the actor said. "They are on the wrong side of history."
