Despite what Harrison Ford has said, wife Calista Flockhart thinks he’s a pretty good dad after decades of experience.
“I think he was a really good father in a lot of ways,” Flockhart, 59, told The New York Times in a profile published on Friday, January 26, while speaking about their son Liam, now 23. “Maybe because he was on Round 2 or Round 3, so he had matured and grown up and, I think, evolved into being a good father. He’s such a good father to his kids now. I love his kids, my stepkids.”
When Ford, 81, and Flockhart first met at the 2002 Golden Globes, he was still in the midst of a divorce and the Ally McBeal alum had just adopted Liam.
“Didn’t scare me off,” Ford told the NYT of meeting Flockhart when she was a new mom. “When I met Liam, he was just beginning to walk, and it just didn’t matter to me. I had four children already, and I can’t count that well, so it didn’t make that much difference.”
Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart‘s first encounter was straight out of a rom-com — albeit one set among the Hollywood A-list. The Star Wars actor and the Ally McBeal alum initially met at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards. Reports circulated at the time that Flockhart got her future husband’s attention by intentionally spilling a drink […]
The Star Wars actor shares sons Ben, 56, and William, 54, with ex-wife Mary Marquardt, to whom he was married from 1964 to 1979. Ford and the late Melissa Mathison, to whom he was married from 1983 to 2004, welcomed daughter Georgia, 33, and son Malcolm, 36. (Mathison, a screenwriter, died of neuroendocrine cancer in 2015. She was 65.) He officially adopted Liam in 2010 after he and Flockhart tied the knot.
Though he likes to joke, in a rare moment of vulnerability last year, Ford admitted that he didn’t think he was the world’s best father. “I can tell you this: If I’d been less successful, I’d probably be a better parent,” he told Esquire in a May 2023 profile. He went on to note that “the more constant gardener is the better parent,” as he has been “out of town, up my own ass, for most of my life.”
Flockhart, however, thinks he’s a good dad and a great partner. “We’ve had to work,” she told the Times of their nearly 14-year marriage. “We’ve had our ups, we’ve had downs like everybody else — mostly ups, which is good — and we just stay together. He’s the person that I want to call when something happens. That knee-jerk thing where I have to call Harrison.”
While Ford continued to star in movies throughout their 22-year romance, Flockhart chose to focus on being a mother. Since Brothers & Sisters came to an end after five seasons in 2011, the actress has largely stuck to supporting roles on shows like Web Therapy and Supergirl. She said that she was “really content being home” as a full-time mom and staying at home probably helped her marriage to Ford.
“I didn’t have the same dreams at the time, so we weren’t competing with each other,” she explained. “We’re very independent of each other in some ways and probably incredibly codependent on each other in others.”
However, now that her son is all grown up (he graduated from Amherst College last year), she’s ready for her comeback. Flockhart stars as Lee Radziwill in showrunner Ryan Murphy‘s highly anticipated FX mini series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. The eight-episode drama premieres on FX Wednesday, January 31, at 10 p.m. ET.
