Did you know a pre-fame Harrison Ford was a roadie for The Doors?

2 June 2025, 12:33

He's a bonafide Hollywood legend.

Throughout his career, Harrison Ford has played an enviable amount of iconic characters to shine on the silver screen.

From swashbuckling space pirate Han Solo in Star Wars, to maverick adventuring archaeologist Indiana Jones, to influential sci-fi noir Blade Runner's gumshoe detective Rick Deckard and more.

Few actors have carried the weight of timeless Hollywood movie franchises quite like Ford.

A true cinematic cultural powerhouse, there's a reason why Harrison Ford is one of the most bankable stars in the history of Hollywood.

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But he lived a life before becoming one of motion pictures' most recognisable faces around the world.

It's common knowledge that Ford got his big break later in life than most, being 35 years old when Star Wars went stratospheric and transformed him into a box office phenomenon.

Before then, he was a struggling bit-part actor, a carpenter, and even a one-time roadie for acid rock pioneers The Doors.

Harrison Ford's on-screen career pre-Star Wars fame wasn't exactly meteoric, and he certainly couldn't be considered an overnight success.

He did snatch a bit-part in George Lucas' 1973 cult coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti - which obviously put him in good stead as it was the director who rehired him for Star Wars.

Up until then, he largely worked as a carpenter, doing bits and bobs for many of the music scenesters that resided in California.

Wanting to score a breakthrough into the movies, he was offered an opportunity to work as a lackey cameraman for a band who arguably one of the world's hottest musical prospects.

In 1968, The Doors set out on tour and wanted to document the experience, which later became the film Feast Of Friends.

The band's singer Jim Morrison and keyboardist Ray Manzarek gave the job to budding film-maker Paul Ferrara who was a friend from UCLA, and Ford bagged a job after doing some carpentry at his house.

But the escapades on the road – which involved drink, drugs, and debauchery – nearly turned Harrison off movie-making forever.

Harrison Ford on being camera crew for The Doors | 1989 #80s

Ferrara invited the future Hollywood pin-up on tour to help as a second unit cameraman, even though Ford had no prior experience.

He needed to learn, and fast, so took a crash course in shooting at the Sixth Annual Renaissance Pleasure Faire in California.

The Doors' guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore were also in attendance at the faire, which coincidentally took place on May 4th, a date that Ford would later be associated after it was anointed 'Star Wars day'.

His work impressed Ferrara who sent Ford out to the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival to film the band.

Though he was most certainly an amateur, his footage later made the final cut of the documentary which was eventually released in 1970.

Harrison Ford & Jim Morrison

During an interview several decades later, the movie behemoth revealed: "I worked on a road tour film of The Doors, we went around for about a week and a half. A concert tour."

"When it was over, I was one step away from joining a Jesuit monastery," he joked. "I thought it was cool, I thought it was hip, but I couldn’t keep up with those guys. It was too much.

"I was part of the camera crew, second camera. I don't think any of it was in focus. Not a bit of it. Those were the old days."

It was only a week and a half he spent with The Doors, though he got to brush shoulders with a band who were one of the greatest of their generation.

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Little did he know – or did anybody for that matter – that Ford himself would etch himself into the annuls of Hollywood history some years later.

Though the experience might've made him question his ambition to enter the world of cinema, thankfully it didn't.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have had the wealth of magical movie moments that Harrison Ford conjured on screen.

But it just goes to show, despite his mammoth levels of success over the course of his five-decades-long career in Hollywood, everyone has to start somewhere.