Meet Harrison Ford’s Oscar-nominated wife he split from just before meeting Calista Flockhart

Harrison’s second marriage was to Melissa Mathison. Melissa was a renowned Hollywood screenwriter, known especially for her frequent collaborations with Steven Spielberg.

Melissa was a native of Los Angeles and grew up as friends with the family of Francis Ford Coppola, even babysitting for his kids. It was through that association she got her first break in Hollywood.

Coppola offered her the position of his assistant on The Godfather Part II (1974), and he encouraged her to adapt the 1941 children’s novel The Black Stallion into a film, which was released in 1979 and earned critical acclaim and two Oscar nominations.

She was then noticed by Spielberg, and she wrote the screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film is considered one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, plus a Saturn Award win.

Her other notable writing credits include 1995’s The Indian in the Cupboard, 1997’s Kundun, acting as a consultant on 2008’s Ponyo, and her final project, 2016’s The BFG.

Harrison and Melissa first met in 1976 on the set of Apocalypse Now, when he was still married to Mary Marquardt. He and Mary got divorced in 1979, but it took a while for him to begin dating Melissa.

They began a relationship in 1982 and finally tied the knot a year later, connected through their mutual prominent filmmaker friends Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg.

Harrison was already a dad-of-two through his marriage to Mary. In 1987, Harrison welcomed his third child and his first with Melissa, a son named Malcolm. While he made small acting appearances, his primary passion is music, working with a band named The Dough Rollers.

Their daughter Georgia was born in 1990. She also became an actress like her father and lives a more private life as well, most recently joining her dad at the Golden Globe Awards.

By the end of 2000, Harrison and Melissa announced that after nearly two decades of marriage, they were separating. In 2002, he met Calista, but while the divorce was amicable, it was lengthy.

Their divorce proceedings drew out considerably due to the lack of a prenuptial agreement and their many shared assets, not being finalized until 2004. Melissa reportedly received an estimated $85 million in the settlement (some report it as high as $118 million), one of the largest in Hollywood history.

Melissa lived a quieter life after the end of her marriage but continued to work. She was most notably involved in activism, specifically for the Tibetan independence movement. She met the Dalai Lama while writing Kundun and was a member of the board of the International Campaign for Tibet.

Her work in screenwriting slowed down by the aughts, working as a story consultant with Studio Ghibli on Ponyo before teaming up with her old friend Steven Spielberg once again on The BFG. Sadly, she passed away in 2015 at the age of 65 from neuroendocrine cancer, with the film posthumously being released a year later.