Despite a long television career, Mark Harmon only has 13 film credits to his name. And within the NCIS actor’s limited big screen appearances, Mark Harmon’s best-performing movie is 2003’s Freaky Friday.
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, the Disney movie follows a mother and daughter who better understand each other after switching bodies thanks to a pair of magic fortune cookies.
NCIS star Mark Harmon appears in the 2003 remake as Ryan Volvo, the partner to Jamie Lee Curtis’ Tess Coleman. The struggling stepfather has to deal with his fiancée suddenly acting differently while also trying to win over his unruly stepdaughter.
Freaky Friday went on to gross over $160 million worldwide and helped Lindsay Lohan become one of the most recognizable faces in early 2000s cinema.
In the following, we take a look at how Freaky Friday became Mark Harmon’s most successful movie and what it was like working with Lindsay Lohan. We also discuss why Mark Harmon’s film career is limited and what he’s doing with NCIS now that Gibbs is no longer in the original show.
How Mark Harmon’s Best Performing Movie Became Freaky Friday
Buena Vista released Disney’s Freaky Friday over 20 years ago. It cost $26 million to produce, made $160.8 million worldwide and earned positive reviews from critics. It is Mark Harmon’s most successful film by almost triple. His other film roles include appearing as the lead in the 1987 comedy Summer School with Kirstie Alley.
In 1988, he co-starred with Sean Connery and Meg Ryan in the 1988 film The Presidio, and opposite Jodie Foster in Stealing Home. He also had minor roles in Natural Born Killers and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
2003’s Freaky Friday originally was set to star Annette Bening and Michelle Trachtenberg as a mother and daughter who swap bodies on Friday 13th. A remake of the 1977 movie, which starred Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Lindsay Lohan played the mother and daughter combination.
Tom Selleck was originally set to appear in the movie, but when Annette Bening pulled out of the movie, Selleck lost interest. The casting director explained they chose Harmon to replace him.
“As far as an older man, he was still considered to be like a heartthrob because women adored him.”
Will A Freaky Friday Sequel With Mark Harmon, Jamie Lee Curtis And Lindsay Lohan Ever Happen?
While Mak Harmon has not explicitly spoken about what it was like working with Lindsay Lohan, he has spoken about the joy of working with his long-term friend Jamie Lee Curtis.
During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, the host brought up recent talk of a sequel to Freaky Friday. Harmon thinks a sequel is inevitable. “Jamie’s talking about it,” Harmon explained to the singer and host, “and you know Jamie … I’ve known her since she was 15, and if she’s talking about it, then it’ll happen, because all things happen.”
In an interview with The New York Times in honor of the movie’s 20th anniversary, Lindsay Lohan, confirmed that both she and Curtis are open to the possibility of making a sequel but are “leaving it in the hands that be.”
“We would only make something that people would absolutely adore.”
Jamie Lee Curtis was a little more certain about a Freaky Friday sequel when she spoke to Variety. “It’s going to happen. Without saying there’s anything officially happening, I’m looking at you in this moment and saying, ‘Of course it’s going to happen.’ It’s going to happen.”
Why Mark Harmon’s Movie Career Is Limited
Despite several high-profile roles, Mark Harmon’s film career never gained momentum. One of the reasons he decided to concentrate on TV was because he didn’t want to be away from his family.
Harmon was working on a movie in New Guinea when he missed his son’s first steps. The actor feared that working in a job which took him so far from home would lead to him missing key milestones.
The actor told his wife, fellow actress Pam Dawber, “Hate to tell you, but I’m not gonna be doing new movies in New Guinea for the rest of my life to be able to afford the house we’re in, and miss all this.”
Director John Korty, who worked with Harmon on Long Road Home, has a theory Mark Harmon’s good looks have been more of a hindrance than a help.
“One of the problems with Mark is that he is so naturally good looking,” Korty once explained to the LA Times. “So people say, ‘Let’s make him into Clark Gable.’ What I like about Mark is that he is so straight and down to earth. His favorite hobby is woodworking. I think the biggest mistake is putting him in those slick roles.”
Mark Harmon ultimately made the right choice to stick with television, as he became one of the highest-paid TV stars. By the time Harmon left NCIS in the fall of 2021, he was reportedly making more than $525,000 per episode.
It was reported that Mark Harmon earned over $19 million a year by the time CBS picked NCIS up for the 16th season. This placed him as the seventh biggest paid star on TV and the fifth highest-paid actor, placing behind the stars of The Big Bang Theory. Along with his lead role, Harmon also acted as an executive producer on many episodes of NCIS.
Thanks to his TV work, Mark Harmon’s net worth is believed to be $120 million.
Mark Harmon’s New NCIS Role
Mark Harmon will be back in the world of NCIS with a prequel focusing on the early days of Mark Harmon’s long-running character, Jethro Gibbs. Fans were left devastated when Mark Harmon announced he was leaving the 2021 CBS drama after 19 seasons.
The NCIS: Origins series will see Austin Stowell playing a young commanding officer, Gibbs. Harmon, who played the role for 19 seasons of NCIS between 2003 and 2021, will feature as the narrator.
A logline for the new show reveals that it will follow the character as he “starts his career as a newly minted special agent at the fledgling NCIS Camp Pendleton office, where he forges his place on a gritty, ragtag team led by NCIS legend Mike Franks”.
Viewers can expect to see Mark Harmon returning to the franchise to “narrate the complex and mysterious backstory of Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ early years in NCIS: Origins, which will build on the rich legacy of this character while reintroducing fan-favorite characters and meeting new ones.”