Long before Tom Cruise was driving motorcycles off cliffs, Harrison Ford was swinging from a whip and punching (fake) Nazis.
The acclaimed actor made doing ones own stunts cool while Cruise was still dancing in his underwear, and — now a full-blown octogenarian — Ford is still at it. He can’t quite manage many of the stunts he took on in his youth, but the 80-year-old actor still performs many of his stunts in this month’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. That’s impressive all on its own, but far cooler when the actor’s history with stunts is considered.
Many people, including Ford’s stunt double from all three original Indiana Jones flicks, have noted the actor’s affinity for stunt work. His longtime stunt double, Vic Armstrong, even pulled him aside at one point during filming for The Last Crusade, according to IMDb, to urge him to back off a bit. He was so focused on doing his own stunts that Armstrong was forced to urge the star to let him “do some work” for the film, a trend that apparently started with Raiders of the Lost Ark.
A quote from Armstrong only reinforces this idea. The stellar stuntman was quick to praise Ford’s performance, noting that “If he wasn’t such a great actor, he would have made a really great stuntman.”
Ford echoed a similar sentiment toward Armstrong in a separate interview, following years of suffering from mistaken identity. Armstrong reportedly looks so much like Ford that the two were often mistaken for one another during filming for all three original Indiana Jones flicks, and it became an ongoing joke among the cast and crew. So much so, in fact, that Ford referenced it in a message to Armstrong at the conclusion of filming for The Last Crusade, writing “Vic, if you learn to talk I am in deep trouble” on a picture he signed for his longtime stunt man and friend.