Harrison Ford Does a Reddit AMA and Reveals That His Favourite Cheese is Manchego Among Other Things

Legendary actor Harrison Ford came on Reddit to answer an AMA or 'Ask Me Anything' to promote a 'Years of Living Dangerously' episode, which features him as a correspondent. For the uninitiated, YLD happens to be a new Showtime docu-series about climate change.

Reddit users went on to ask him several questions and below are some of his most notable responses from the session.

How did you feel about Star Wars when you first started? How were you approached?

"I was approached with the offer of a job, which at that point, was all I wanted to hear. I had helped George Lucas audition other actors for the principle parts, and with no expectation or indication that I might be considered for the part of Han, I was quite surprised when I was offered the part. My principle job at the time was carpentry, I had been under contract as an actor at Columbia and Universal. I had a house at the time I wanted to remodel, a bit of the wreck of a house. I'd invest money in tools but wouldn't have money for materials, so I realised this was another way of putting food on the table. And allowing me to pick and choose from the acting jobs that were being offered at the time."

What movie quote do you get asked to do the most?

"Get off my plane."

Mr Ford, would you share any of your favourite helicopter rescue stories?

"You know, anything that I was involved in with picking people up in a helicopter, I was one of a group of people working with Wyoming on search and rescue. And they were always team efforts, and it was always embarrassing to be singled out and given credit for a rescue or any help I was able to give because it was always a team effort."

Were there any injuries / weird occurrences / funny stories on any of the Indiana Jones sets?

"Oh, let's see. On the first Indiana Jones movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees, can't remember which knee, the scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way."

"Funny stories? We were shooting in Tunisia, and the script had a scene in which I fight a swordsman, an expert swordsman, it was meant to be the ultimate duel between sword and whip. And I was suffering from dysentery, really, found it inconvenient to be out of my trailer for more than 10 minutes at a time. We'd done a brief rehearsal of the scene the night before we were meant to shoot it, and both Steve and I realised it would take 2 or 3 days to shoot this. And it was the last thing we were meant to shoot in Tunisia before we left to shoot in England. And the scene before this in the film included a whip fight against 5 bad guys that were trying to kidnap Marian, so I thought it was a bit redundant. I was puzzling how to get out of this three days of shooting, so when I got to set I proposed to Steven that we just shoot the son a bitch and Steve said "I was thinking that as well." So he drew his sword, the poor guy was a wonderful British stuntman who had practiced his sword skills for months in order to do this job, and was quite surprised by the idea that we would dispatch him in 5 minutes. But he flourished his sword, I pulled out my gun and shot him, and then we went back to England."

I live in your old house on Woodrow. Are there any secrets I should know about?

"Yes. There's millions of dollars buried in your basement."

Is it true you have an ant or a spider named after yourself?

"Yes, I think an ant was named after me by Dr Wilson. We spoke about him earlier. And they offered to name a butterfly after me, and I thought that would be better that it be named after my daughter, Georgia."

If you and Mark Hamill fought who would win?

"Me, of course."

What made you say yes to starring in Expendables 3?

I was on my way to Indonesia to do Years of Living Dangerously, and halfway around the world. And the location for Expendables was right on the way, and they asked me for a relatively short period of time, and it seemed like fun. I hadn't seen the films but I looked one of them and I thought it was kind of funny, so I thought why not?

Hello Harrison! Who would win in a celebrity boxing match: Han Solo or Indiana Jones?

"The promoter would win."

What is your favourite type of cheese?

"Manchego."

Check out the entire AMA over here.