Play animation from AnimationClip

How would I play a stored animationclip?

ive tried the below but unity dosnt recognise .clip (legacy?)

Code (CSharp):

1. public AnimationClip harvestAnimation;
2.  
3.     public void Activation (Animator animator) {
4.         animator.clip = harvestAnimation;
5.         animator.Play();  
6.     }
7.  

EDIT:
Clarification:
The player will interact with a gameobject and click on it. The player will play a animation stored in the gameobject. Each gameobject will serve a different purpose, therefore will have different animations. The best way I can think of accomplishing this is to put the required animation to be played in the gameobject. The above script is the gameobject script.

 

You can use the Playables API to achieve this. See the first example on the following page:

Playing a single animation clip on a GameObject
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Playables-Examples.html

Playables API
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Playables.html
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/08/02/unity-2017-1-feature-spotlight-playable-api/

 

Any other ways to achieve this? The above looks like overkill for what im after (or it could be cold feet)

 

Bump