Harrison Ford Would Be Happy if This Was His Last Project

I recently rewatched John Cena’s last wrestling match with my kids (stay with me). It was an emotional affair, not just because of how much Cena has given to the business over the years, but also because wrestlers don’t often get to have a “last match.” Injury, lack of popularity, or worse, death, often removes these performers from the squared circle. And that can be the case for anyone, from big stars to small. So, to get to see such a pillar of the community take a year-long victory lap into retirement was special.

While professional wrestling can be a bit more dangerous and tragic for its participants, they are performers and can share a similar trajectory to professional actors. Plenty of thespians over the years have had massive careers, only for them to dry up at a moment’s notice. It’s not often that a movie star gets to say, “This is it.” It happens, and is certainly special when it does, but some folks never want to hang up their comedy and tragedy masks, and others may not even get a say in the matter.

So, hearing that Harrison Ford has found something that he feels would suffice as a final outing makes me similarly emotional. Ford has loomed large in my life, even longer than a certain Doctor of Thuganomics. Han Solo was my favorite Star Wars character growing up. Indiana Jones gave me the knowledge that certain people in this world deserve to be punched. Hell, Ford kicking Gary Oldman off of Air Force One was the first time I had heard an audience applaud in a movie theater.

Harrison Ford is larger than life, but age comes for us all. The man is 83-years-old. Every day is a blessing. While he hasn’t announced his retirement like a particular 17-time World Champion, he has made it clear that his current work on the Apple TV show Shrinking would be a fitting end to his lengthy career.

“Where do you go from here? The kind of work that we’re able to do is remarkable given the tools we have to work with, and the notion that lies behind this series. And if it was all over here, that would be sufficient,” Ford explained in a recent panel discussing the show (via THR). “This has been a different kind of job for me, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. This is very special and it really nurtures me and makes me feel like what we’re doing has value and importance. I look for that in my life and I’m happy to have found it here.”

Isn’t that nice? Not only am I happy that Ford found something he wouldn’t mind hanging his hat on, but he’s saying this not just because of its quality. The man seems truly touched by what he’s working on. He’s spent years being paid to pretend he gives a damn about the Millennium Falcon (onscreen, not in interviews). Here, he can just be genuinely happy. That rules (almost as much as John Cena ruled the WWE for the better part of two decades).