Opinion: Why I’ll be thinking about Harrison Ford this Father’s Day

Editor’s Note: David Allan is the editorial director of CNN Features. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

In the 1986 film “The Mosquito Coast,” Harrison Ford plays Allie Fox, a husband and father who moves his family to Central America where he organizes the locals to do his bidding, while convincing them it’s for their own benefit.

“Your father [is a] great man!” an elderly local tells Fox’s son Charlie, played by River Phoenix. “He my father, too. We all his children!”

Forget Tom Hanks. Harrison Ford is America’s real dad. His characters have a more authentic edge, more flaws and at times are more interested in career over family. Ford has been in over 70 films which have earned more than $9 billion. He is a leading man among leading men.

And all my life I’ve been seeking out father figures. Raised by a single mother after my parents divorced when I was a toddler, as a kid I looked out for stand-in dads to supplement my actual see-ya-on-the-weekend one. I found them in teachers, coaches, neighbors and television and movie stars. But one actor reliably returned throughout my life.

Portraying characters who are larger than life, cool, funny, brave, loyal, handsome, clever, adventurous and occasionally kind, Ford has stepped into roles (a few recurring) that consistently offered me a father figure to look up to.

This Father’s Day is the first since my real father passed away and I’m grateful with the premiere of a new film later this month, that Indiana Jones is coming, once more, to the rescue to help fill the emotional gap. Indy is one of six Ford roles that collectively imprinted his fatherly archetype on our cultural consciousness.

My amalgamated father figure was an archaeologist, cop, inventor, lawyer, CIA analyst and space cowboy. And my movie dad could beat up your dad.

We don’t know much about what the actor is like as an actual father, though he recently spoke about how the success of his career kept him from being as available as he wanted to his own kids. But for the children in the audience, Ford’s famous characters often embodied a parental figure within a narrative of redemption.

Here are some of the ways Harrison Ford’s fatherly roles have shaped my Gen X siblings and me over the past 50 years.

Indiana Jones, the cool dad

It doesn’t matter if “The Dial of Destiny,” the newest installment in the Indy franchise, is great or just a fun time. Either way, Henry Jones Jr. will endure as a cultural icon, particularly to those of us who were kids when Indy took his first swing on a whip.

The character’s connections to fatherhood emerge slowly. In the second film, “The Temple of Doom” (1984), Indy does a heroic, if mixed, job of looking after a kid in his employ, Short Round (portrayed unforgettably by Ke Huy Quan). In the fourth, “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (2008), Jones reconciles with an estranged son he had with Marion, his love interest from the first, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981). And in the latest adventure, he rescues his goddaughter (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge) from peril. As we’ve come to know more of him, we discover that fame, glory and antiquities aren’t the only things the world’s most famous archaeologist cares about.

Allie Fox, the foreboding dad

In the adaptation of Paul Theroux’s 1981 novel “The Mosquito Coast,” Ford’s character, Allie Fox, is described by his boss (in the film) as “the most obnoxious man I’ve ever met” and “the worst kind of pain in the neck- a know-it-all who’s sometimes right.” Fox is a narcissistic, if brilliant, inventor who risks the lives of his wife, played by Helen Mirren, and kids when he takes them to a spit of land in Honduras. His family admires and fears him in equal measure.

As a dad, Fox may be cruel at times, but he is always teaching and encouraging his kids’ personal growth. He goes about it the wrong way, but he believes it to be his fatherly duty. The compelling nature of Ford’s performance is that even as Fox goes too far in his pursuits, you still root for him.

On balance, I looked up to Ford’s character and the wisdom he imparts, especially because I didn’t have to personally endure his dangerous whims.

John Book, the always around dad

Ford doesn’t play a father in “Witness” (1985) but still exemplifies parental virtues in his portrayal of a Philadelphia police detective who goes beyond the call of duty to protect an eight-year-old witness to a murder.

Book risks his own life and even kills others to keep the fatherless boy safe. Ford’s scenes with young Lukas Haas are tender and marked by a real connection between the two. Book also wins the affection of the boy’s mother, played by Kelly McGillis.

As a boy living with a single mom, I longed for a John Book-type to teach me something of the outside world and to have my back when the going got tough.

Jack Ryan, the hero dad

Ford starred in two adaptations of Tom Clancy novels. And while the plots centered on geopolitical threats, protecting his family was the subtheme to Ryan’s character, particularly in “Patriot Games,” when terrorists attack his wife and daughter directly. Ford’s Ryan is smart and brave and a bit vulnerable. He saves America as well as his family.

For me, Ryan seemed the most attainable kind of father figure, one who traveled a lot for work but was there when it mattered the most.

Han Solo, the loveable scoundrel dad

In the original “Star Wars” trilogy that Gen X grew up on, we didn’t know our favorite space pirate would eventually become a father. And when he did in the sequels, for many of us it coincided with our own fatherhoods.

We love Solo for his loyalty and charm. Luke may be the one on the hero’s journey in the first three films, but it’s Solo who seems to have already arrived. And it’s with this role, first seen at such a young age, that I began to fantasize about Ford standing in for my own dad, perhaps in part because they bore some physical similarities.

The Solo denouement in “The Force Awakens,” in which he dies while trying to make peace with his rogue son, is a moving and fitting send-off to one of the most popular roles in film history.

Henry Turner, the accidentally empathic dad

“Regarding Henry,” written by J.J. Abrams and directed by Mike Nichols, has not stood the test of time as other Ford roles have, but his performance in this 1991 film is one of his most emotional. He makes a dramatic turn from a cold, distant father to a loving and fully present one.

It’s troubling that the journey is due to a shooting that leaves him with severe brain damage, but as character development goes, we’re rooting for Henry because he’s no longer the ethically dubious lawyer and jerk from the beginning of the film. His career ended by his injury, Henry focuses on being a better person and a more loving husband and father. The scenes with his daughter, portrayed by Kamian Allen, are heartbreakingly sweet.

If there’s a recurring theme to many of these parenting narratives throughout Ford’s career, it’s one of redemption. When we first meet his characters, they often care about one thing, themselves, and then are softened by love or reminded of what’s most important.

This evolution resonates strongly for many of my generation, marked by divorce and latchkey independence. Watching this evolution of the American Dad onscreen is a reminder of who we were as kids and how we want to be as parents.

Even if our real-life fathers weren’t around as much as we wanted – or weren’t as cool, brave, clever and adventurous – we could always rely on Han, Henry, Allie, Jack, John and Indiana to come to the rescue.