Hollywood icon and Oscar winner Harrison Ford, 83, has recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award. While onscreen, he played a tough guy, fighting off evil, he made a rare comment about avoiding the Vietnam War draft. Ford gave details about how he filed for conscientious objector status in a new interview with NPR.
“I was facing being drafted, and I hired a lawyer to represent me to the draft board,” the Star Wars actor said on Wednesday. “I had to explain why I might qualify as a conscientious objector.” “I explained that I did not have a history of religious affiliation. My mother was Jewish, my father Catholic. I was raised a Democrat.”
At that stage, the actor was a few years away from his big break in Star Wars when the draft ended in 1974. At that stage, he was still working as a carpenter to keep him going as he grew his acting career. The Indiana Jones actor then reached out to the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich for help to get his name removed from the lottery.
Tillich, who died in 1965, explained to Ford, “If you have trouble with the word ‘God,’ take whatever is central and most meaningful to your life and call that ‘God.’”
“And to me that was life itself,” Ford explained, “the complexity, the biodiversity, the incredible integration and complexity of nature, to me seemed to be the same thing as God.”
Harrison Ford and wife Calista Flockhart share a cute moment on the Actor Awards red carpet ahead of his Life Achievement Award 🥹 pic.twitter.com/5ZmCVvm8hJ
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Ford went on to built a case that was “probably so unusual that it found the edge of a desk and had a lot of things piled on top of it because it didn’t fit a niche.” He added, “They never got back to me, basically. The draft board never got back to me.”
Ford first made mention of dodging the draft in 1997, and several newspapers covered the story, but made it sound like Ford had merely “claimed” to be a conscientious objector. They made it sound like he had deliberately set out to confuse the draft board. Ford objected to the articles, sending letters to over 100 newspapers, to get an across-the-board retraction.
Ford’s lawyers send out a statement, reading, “The statement that Harrison Ford was merely ‘claiming’ to be a conscientious objector solely to dodge the draft is false and defamatory.”
“Even a casual reading of the interview with our client in Movieline magazine reveals that any confusion occurred wholly on the government’s part, but that Mr. Ford’s conscientious objection status was sincere and principled,” it continued. Following that, many newspaper, including the New York Times, issued clarifications over the story.
After 60 years, Harrison Ford is still enjoying the benefits of his objection and on March 1, was honored with the SAG-AFTRA Lifetime Achievement Award, something he likely would not have received had the draft derailed his career.
In his moving speech at the award ceremony, the actor said he was “humbled.” He added, “I’m in a room of actors, many of whom are here because they’ve been nominated to receive a prize for their amazing work, while I’m here to receive a prize for being alive,”
“That said, it’s a little weird to get a lifetime achievement award at the half point of my career,” Ford joked. “This is very encouraging.”
