Why Harrison Ford never uses the word 'hero' to describe his characters

Indiana Jones can be called a lot of things — professor of archeology, expert on the occult, obtainer of rare antiquities — but hero is not one of them. At least, according to the man who plays him.

"I don't use the word hero at all, because I think it starts us off in the wrong direction," Harrison Ford tells EW of how he has approached playing the character. "For years and years and years, I've been saying I want to play an ordinary person [in] extraordinary circumstances, who happens to behave well for the benefit of others."

Ford plays the beloved (but not heroic!) fedora-wearing, whip-cracking character for a fifth (and he swears final) time in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, in theaters Friday. It's the first film in the franchise — which also includes 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1984's Temple of Doom, 1989's Last Crusade, and 2008's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — to not be directed by Steven Spielberg. Ford v Ferrari helmer James Mangold directs instead. Getting to work with the 80-year-old Ford and watch him craft the iconic character was a unique experience for Mangold.

"It's interesting, doing what I do, you meet leading men or movie stars or legends, and for many of them, there's an idea about how their brand works or what their audience wants — and there's a kind of hyper-awareness about being a hero," explains the director. "For Harrison, it's much more like working with a leading man who thinks of himself as a character actor. What I mean by that is, he wants to get under his character's skin and expose as many of his frailties or liabilities or neuroses as much as his capabilities."

"He's not interested in just creating a kind of hero," Mangold adds. "He's interested in creating a person filled with foibles and tics who just happens to be handsome and dashing and a world globetrotter."

When EW later asks Ford about his thoughts on his director's words, he jokes, "Well, I'm good with it, up to the point where you get to the handsome and dashing part." The rest of it he's okay with, though.

"You look for the details of your character, which may bring further expression and familiarity to the audience. And I don't mean familiarity with the actor, I mean with the character," Ford admits. "But the job of an actor in playing a character is to tell the story through the behavior of his character, and so the more details you can bring to that character, the more full the story is."

For more on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, as well as Ford's thoughts on the franchise's legacy, check out EW's cover story here.

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