CANNES (Reuters) – Harrison Ford teared up on Friday as he recalled his years playing Indiana Jones, after the Cannes premiere of what he has said will be his last outing in the blockbuster film franchise.
“I love to work and I love this character and I love what it brought into my life,” he told journalists at the festival.
“Is it not evident?” the 80-year-old added, when asked why he was setting aside the role now.
He was speaking a day after receiving an honorary award at the film extravaganza for his cinema career.
The new film, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, pits the adventurous archaeologist against a former Nazi scientist, played by Mads Mikkelsen, who is searching for a dial that makes it possible to travel through time.
“Fleabag” writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge also joins in the adventure as Jones’ goddaughter.
“There’s magic here and it comes from the collaboration, from the knit of everybody’s ambition,” Ford said, his voice breaking as he reflected on working with the Dial of Destiny cast. “I’ve never seen actors give as much to each other.”
The film opens at the end of the Second World War with a younger-looking Ford, a feat of artificial intelligence technology that uses old footage to create a de-aged version of his face.
“I know that is my face, that it is not some PhotoShop magic. That’s what I looked like 35 years ago because Lucasfilm has every frame of film that we made together over all these year,” Ford said.
He was happy with how the effect turned out, but he didn’t want to be young again, he said.
Ford, who first played Indiana Jones in 1981, told Total Film magazine last month that he would hang up the character’s iconic bull whip and hat for good after this film, which will be released to wider audiences in late June.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
