The film was an action-adventure with a twist: directed by Spielberg, it centered around the swashbuckling international antics of—an archaeology professor? Ridley Scott, who directed Ford in 1982’s Blade Runner has said that before Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ford was “not a well-known actor, but the man who played Han Solo.” The film, starring Ford as the rumpled, fedora-wearing Professor Indiana Jones, transformed the 38-year-old into an international sex symbol. It grossed over $231 million and spawned two sequels, 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, also starring Sean Connery as Jones’s father.

Just as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films cemented Ford’s reputation as an action star, other movies have focused on different facets of his immensely recognizable screen personality. In 1985, he gave one of his best-received performances—earning an Academy Award nomination—in Witness, as a police detective who must protect an Amish boy who has witnessed a brutal murder. He departed even further from type, with equal success, in 1988’s corporate romance, Working Girl, also featuring Melanie Griffith, Sigourney Weaver, and Alec Baldwin. Over the next ten years, his films ran the gamut from legal thrillers (1990’s Presumed Innocent) to classic romantic comedies (a remake of the classic Humphrey Bogart movie Sabrina in 1995) to more action-adventure blockbusters, most notably starring turns as Jack Ryan in Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger(1994) and Richard Kimble in 1993’s The Fugitive). In 1999, Ford mixed romance and action (to somewhat middling results) in director Sydney Pollack’s Random Hearts. Most recently, he starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the supernatural thriller What Lies Beneath (2000). A fourth Indiana Jones installment is reportedly in the works and slated for 2004, when the actor will be 62 years old.

Ford is famously reluctant to reveal too much about his personal life to the press. He and Marquardt divorced in 1978, and in 1983, Ford married Melissa Mathison, a screenwriter who penned the scripts for movies such as E.T., The Indian in the Cupboard, and Kundun. They have two children, Malcolm and Georgia; Ford also has two sons, Ben and Willard, from his previous marriage. Ford and his family have a home in Manhattan and a ranch near Jackson, Wyoming. Ford, who has his pilot’s license, owns six aircraft, including a helicopter and a Gulfstream Jet, as well as several motorcycles. In November 2000, Ford announced his separation from Mathison. Though the couple briefly reconciled in the spring of 2001 and reportedly remain friends, Mathison filed for legal separation in August of that year. .