Harrison Ford — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago in July 1942 to Christopher Ford, an advertising executive and former vaudeville and radio actor of Irish Catholic background, and Dorothy Nidelman, whose parents Harry Nidelman and Anna Lifschutz were Ashkenazi Jews who had emigrated from Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, in the early years of the twentieth century. They left in the same wave that carried a large part of the Empire's Jewish population west after the pogroms of 1903 to 1906.
Ford has described the combination without solemnity. Asked about it, he has said that as a man he has always felt Irish and as an actor he has always felt Jewish, and has described the household he grew up in as one of liberals of every stripe rather than of any observance.
He worked as a carpenter in Los Angeles between small parts, made his screen debut in 1966, and had his first substantial role in American Graffiti in 1973. Star Wars in 1977 made him globally famous as Han Solo; Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 made him a leading man in his own right. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for Witness in 1985, played Rick Deckard in both Blade Runner films thirty-five years apart, took the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2000, returned to both of his franchises in his seventies and eighties, and joined the Marvel films in 2025. His pictures have taken over nine billion dollars worldwide.
Away from film he is a licensed fixed-wing and helicopter pilot who has flown volunteer search-and-rescue missions in Wyoming, and one of the longest-serving conservation advocates in the industry, on the board of Conservation International since 1991.
The Minsk connection is two generations back, through his mother's parents.
"Maternal grandparents emigrated from Minsk in the early 1900s"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Minsk (Belarus)
Ford has described the inheritance in his own formulation: as a man he has always felt Irish, as an actor he has always felt Jewish.
Maternal grandparents Harry Nidelman and Anna Lifschutz emigrated from Minsk, then in the Russian Empire, in the early twentieth century. His father's family was Irish Catholic.
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Minsk (Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.