The unstoppable Star Wars: The Force Awakens has taken another record, although this time it’s personal. The box office dominance of J.J. Abrams’ sequel has pushed the total U.S. gross of Harrison Ford’s filmography to $4.7 billion, allowing him to surpass Samuel L. Jackson and become the highest grossing actor in U.S. history. This isn’t the first time Ford has held this title. He was the country’s highest grossing actor until Jackson overtook him, mainly thanks to The Incredibles and, yes, the Star Wars prequels—screen time doesn’t factor into these totals, so no matter how little Jackson appeared in the Star Wars films compared to Ford, it still counts!
Films like the original Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones series certainly bolster Ford’s numbers, but the icon has enjoyed immense box office success across a multitude of genres for decades, from the “action hero” Ford in films like The Fugitive, Patriot Games and Air Force One (which grossed a swell $172 million in the U.S.), to less expected fare like Cowboys & Aliens, 42, and Anchorman 2. There are also a couple of curiosities to be found on Ford’s box office chart, chiefly the staggering $155.4 million gross of Robert Zemeckis’ Hitchcokian thriller What Lies Beneath, a movie time seems to have forgotten. Plus there's the revelation that Ford's Anne Heche two-hander Six Days, Seven Nights grossed nearly twice as much as The Expendables 3 with $74.3 million.
Who else reigns supreme on the individual actor box office chart? Ford is followed by the aforementioned Jackson at $4.6 billion, with Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman not terribly far behind with $4.33 billion and $4.31 billion, respectively. You have to go all the way to #15 to find a female on the list with Cameron Diaz, whose total stands at $3.03 billion thanks in no small part to the Shrek franchise. Indeed, the one thing Ford doesn’t have on his resume is an animated film, which Jackson, Hanks, Freeman, and #5 Eddie Murphy all share.
You can see the full box office chart over at Box Office Mojo. For now, with The Force Awakens seemingly having no end in sight, it doesn’t look like Jackson will be catching up to him anytime soon. Well, until The Incredibles 2, that is.
