Ford never realised scale of 'Star Wars' during filming

Harrison Ford never knew how big ‘Star Wars’ would be.

The 67-year-old actor, who played Han Solo in the first three installments of the science-fiction franchise, admits it wasn’t until he went to the first screening that he understood its significance.

He said: “I thought we were, when we were making the movie, we were constantly being laughed at by the English crew, they thought we dressed funny, nobody had any idea what we were doing. The sets, a lot of them were digitally enhanced.

“But I never had a sense of the scale of the thing until I was sitting in the theatre with the director George Lucas, the first screening, and that ship came over at the beginning of the movie, then I knew.”

Harrison is currently starring in ‘Extraordinary Measures’ alongside Brendan Fraser, and claims he first heard of the story of John Crowley – played by Fraser – in the newspapers.

He told BBC Breakfast: “I read some articles in the Wall Street Journal about John Crowley and his family, he has two children who suffer from a rare genetic disease called Pompeii disease – he quit his job and went into business with the character I play who is a fictional amalgam of a number of difference researchers and scientists that Crowley worked with.

“This film concerns this relationship, this family, the process they went through and the development of this drug which now, when administered to infants, allows them to lead pretty normal lives. “