Harrison Ford says he never tells wife Calista Flockhart what to do

It’s no secret that Hollywood couples rarely go the distance, but Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart have been together since 2002 and have been married for over 15 years. They have one of the cutest love stories, and Ford recently shared the secret to a happy romance: he doesn’t tell her what to do.

The Hollywood legend and Flockhart attended the Actor Awards on Sunday, where he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. While chatting to E!, he revealed his rule for their marriage: “I don’t tell my wife what to do.”

He doubled down when asked whether Flockhart might ever appear on his Apple TV+ series Shrinking. “That would be up to her,” he said. 

The couple’s love story

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It was a sweet moment seeing the couple at the awards, especially since an award show is where their love story started. They first met at the 2002 Golden Globes, and while they have different accounts, we know that wine was involved.  He told The New York Times, “She spilled wine on me, or I spilled wine on her or something, and that sort of sealed the deal.”

Flockhart remembers it slightly differently. According to her, Ford was holding his Cecil B. DeMille Award upside down when she teased him, saying, “Oh, what’s that? A place for me to put my red wine?” Either way, the moment worked.

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More than two decades later, the couple is still going strong, something Ford has been refreshingly candid about reflecting on as he gets older.

“Old people can love, too,” he said during an appearance on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin. “You think about falling in love and all of that business, you think it’s the business of youth or something… and staying in love is the issue. Maintaining, nurturing, basically, not f—ing up.”

For Flockhart, the secret is staying a team.“We’ve had to work,” she told The New York Times. “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.”

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By the time they met, both had already lived full lives. Ford had gone through two divorces and was raising four children. Flockhart had recently adopted her son, Liam, as a single mother.

Ford never hesitated about stepping into that life. “When I met Liam, he was just beginning to walk, and it just didn’t matter to me,” he said. “I had four children already, and I can’t count that well, so it didn’t make that much difference.”

That sense of perspective also came through during Ford’s speech at the Actor Awards, where he reflected on the career that brought him there.

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“Sometimes we make entertainment; sometimes we make art,” he said. “Sometimes we’re lucky to make them both at the same time… and if we’re really fortunate, we also get to make a living doing it.”

Then he acknowledged the people who’ve kept him grounded through it all, especially his “extraordinary, beautiful wife,” who he said has given him “love and courage through all of it.”