The son of a Canadian railroad executive, his family moved to Santa Monica, California, when he was eight years old. His acting career began with plays at high school, followed by acting in West Coast, a traveling theater company. In 1939 he took a screen test for Columbia Pictures, which won him a contract, although he debuted in 20th-Century-Fox's Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence. His rise to stardom was interrupted by military service during WWII. After the war he jump-started his career with Gilda. His career during the 1940s and 1950s showed that his talents were extensive, playing film noir in The Big Heat, westerns like 3:10 to Yuma and comedies like The Gazebo or The Teahouse of the August Moon. He has usually been cast as a calm and collected everyday-hero, showing courage under pressure as in Blackboard Jungle. Since the 1970s he has mainly done supporting roles in mini-series.


Ford was a US Naval Reserve officer who rose to the rank of Captain. Parents, with Eleanor Powell, of the actor Peter Ford, Inducted into the Hall of Fame of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. [1978] Often during his career Ford insisted on being shot looking to camera left - he had been kicked in the right side of his jaw by a horse and insisted the left side of his face was his only filmable side. Related to Sir John A. Macdonald, first Prime Minister of Canada. He is a direct descendant of President Martin Van Buren Served in Vietnam as a reserve military officer. Retired from acting in 1991 following heart and circulatory problems. Ford had been scheduled to make his first public appearance in fifteen years at a 90th birthday tribute gala in his honor hosted by the American Cinematheque at Grauman's Eqyptian Theatre in Hollywood on 1 May 2006, but he was unable to attend. He had suffered a series of minor strokes since his retirement, and was consequently very frail. Has family roots in the English town of Horwich, near Bolton, Lancashire. Like his close friend Ronald Reagan, Ford started as a Democrat but gradually switched to becoming a conservative Republican. His first screen test at 20th Century Fox did not turn out well. He was given a second chance by Columbia a year later, however, and was signed. Despite his excellence and popularity as a star, he was never nominated for an Oscar. Romantically linked over the years with Joan Crawford, Brigitte Bardot, Linda Christian, Hope Lange, Debbie Reynolds, Dinah Shore and Rita Hayworth. Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Actors Branch). He was replaced by Robert Mitchum in "African Skies" (1991) after being hospitalized with blood clots in his legs. In 1967, Naval Reserve Officer Lt. Cmdr. Ford (then aged 50) volunteered to serve for three months as a liaison officer attached to a Marine unit with the rank of Colonel in Vietnam, and on several occasions endured enemy shelling. Ford had intended to play Hondo Lane in Hondo (1953), but backed out when John Farrow was chosen to direct. Ford and Farrow had not got along while making Plunder of the Sun (1953). The part was subsequently played by John Wayne. Took up hang gliding at the age of 64.