Unless you’re a film buff, the name Alden Ehrenreich might not mean much to you.
Soon, it will — on Sunday, Disney and Lucasfilm officially confirmed that the 26-year-old actor will play young Han Solo in a standalone film about the character’s origins. (This was known for a while, but on Sunday it was officially confirmed during London’s Star Wars Celebration event.)
Ehrenreich has big shoes to fill, but he shouldn’t worry. Harrison Ford’s name didn’t carry much recognition either, when he took the role of Han Solo.
At that point, Ford hadn’t been in much — a handful of indie films, a couple episodes of Gunsmoke and a small role in American Graffiti. As the story goes, he had given up acting for carpentry, which he viewed as a more stable career.
“I left acting to become a carpenter because our second baby was coming and we like to eat. I wasn’t making it as an actor,” Ford said at the time, according to Huffington Post. The role didn’t make him a star in the way that Raiders of the Lost Ark would, but it set him up to become Indiana Jones.
Still, Ford has always seemed to hold his character and Star Wars in disdain. As Entertainment Weekly noted, he reportedly turned down hundreds, possibly even thousands, of offers to appear at cast reunions and Star Wars events. At one event that he did attend, he said of Star Wars, “I don’t know that I understood it very well. I’m not sure I understand it yet.”
“Three is enough for me,” he said in an interview after the final film of the original trilogy, then his tone shifted harshly. “I was glad to see that costume for the last time.”
And as recently as 2010, Ford told ABC that he wanted Han Solo to be killed off.
“As a character, he was not so interesting to me,” Ford said.
In fact, when Entertainment Weekly received a tip that Ford might reprise the character in the new Star Wars franchise, the anonymous source went out of his/her way to say, “He’s upbeat about it.”
As with Ford, playing Han Solo will likely be Ehrenreich’s break. Unlike Ford, it seems he actually wants the part.
During the panel at Star Wars Celebration Europe, he seemed pleased to be part of the new Star Wars universe. At one point, he donned a stormtrooper mask and wandered around the convention. When discussing screen-testing for the part, he bubbled over with joy.
“I never acted with a Wookiee,” he said. “It was pretty awesome.”
It’s probably for the best, as the audition process couldn’t have been without stress. Ehrenreich was the first person to audition out of 3,000, a process that lasted six months.
The untitled Han Solo movie, directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (of The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street fame), is set to come out in May 2018.
Video: https://youtu.be/kGpsXuMvApo