Harrison Ford is a film actor and conservation advocate. He is Vice Chair of Conservation International, having served with E.O. Wilson on its board for more than a decade.

Nominated for an Academy Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role for Witness (1985)-a performance that also earned him a BAFTA nomination-Ford is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute (2000) and the Cecil B. De Mille Award of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (2002).

After beginning to act while a student at Ripon College in Wisconsin, Ford worked briefly on stage in summer stock and then moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, becoming a contract player first with Columbia Pictures and then with Universal. Discouraged by the minor roles he was getting in films and television programs, and by the difficulty of providing for his family, he taught himself carpentry and became a sought-after builder and woodworker for residential projects. A connection made through this work led him to his first significant role, in George Lucas's American Graffiti (1973); but he did not begin to win fame until Lucas cast him in the role of Han Solo in Star Wars (1977). With his role as Indiana Jones in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Ford achieved stardom.

His new celebrity enabled Ford to choose roles in more challenging films, in addition to playing the lead in blockbuster entertainments. Among the films in which he has appeared are Peter Weir's Witness (1985) and The Mosquito Coast (1986), Roman Polanski's Frantic (1988), Mike Nichols's Working Girl (1988) and Regarding Henry (1991), and Andrew Davis's The Fugitive (1993).