Mark Hamill still remembers the first time he read the script that would define his career.
"Reading that script and knowing that I had been cast — and even without John Williams' music or the special effects or anything — it read like a dream," he says of George Lucas' 1977 film, Star Wars. "It wasn't that dry, serious, antiseptic science fiction. ... It was funny as hell."
Hamill played Luke Skywalker, one of the most iconic heroes in movie history, in the original Star Wars trilogy and also reprised the role in the latest trilogy. The movies were such a phenomenon that casting directors struggled to see him as other characters. When he got the opportunity to play against type, Hamill pushed his Star Wars identity to the side. At one point, when he was starring in a Broadway show, he deliberately downplayed his association with the franchise.
"In the Playbill, in my bio, I listed all my theater credits, and at the end said, 'He's also known for a series of popular space movies,'" Hamill recalls. He didn't mention Star Wars because he wanted to focus on theater instead, but his former co-star Carrie Fisher wasn't having it.
"She goes, 'What's the deal? ... Get over yourself. You're Luke Skywalker, I'm Princess Leia. Embrace it,'" Hamill says. "And I kind of saw what she meant."
Hamill's other big recurring role, which he had for three decades, was performing the voice of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. Now he's starring as a hard-drinking grandfather in The Life of Chuck, an adaptation of a Stephen King novella. Hamill calls the film, which dabbles in themes of fate and reality, "indescribable."
"My advice to people is to just go," he says. "Go unprepared, don't read reviews. I think it'd be great if people just went and discovered it for themselves, because there are elements that you recognize from Stephen King, apocalyptic themes, a haunted room, but that's not the focus of the picture."
Interview highlights
On auditioning for the movies Star Wars and Carrie on the same day
The cattle call I eventually went to were actors from the ages of like 16 through 35 because they were looking at both Luke and Han Solo. There was no script, you just met with Brian De Palma [who] was casting Carrie, and sitting right next to him was George [Lucas] who was casting Star Wars, and there was no information. I mean they just said, "Tell us a little bit about yourself," and I did, and after a few minutes they said, "OK, thank you." ...
So I didn't get called back on Carrie but I did get called on Star Wars and eventually did a videotaped screen test. Harrison played Han Solo, and we only got about eight pages. I didn't read the whole script until I was given the part.
On the challenge of acting opposite puppets in Star Wars
[Puppeteer] Frank Oz is so good that when I looked at Yoda and he was manipulating him, I totally believed he was real. I mean, a lot of times they would bury him out of sight, underground, he had an earpiece and I had an ear piece so I could hear what he was saying. But I just loved everything about Yoda, the talking backwards thing and just all of it. It was kind of lonely, because I think the most just pure-out fun I had working on the original trilogy was when Harrison, Carrie and I were all on the Death Star running around. It was all three of us together, it was so much fun, and we enjoyed each other's company. And then in Empire [Strikes Back], I go away. I don't even get to keep C-3PO. I keep R2, but I go off to Dagobah and … on my call sheet, I was the only human being ... and then it was puppets, lizards, snakes. It was all props.
On finding a career in voice acting after Star Wars
Voiceover saved my life. When I got into it, I thought, where has this been all this time? I mean, first of all, a character actor is defined by the fact that you don't see the actor, you see just the character. Well, voiceover does that for everyone, because you don't see the actors. And what I'm telling you is since they cast with their ears, not their eyes, you get to play a huge range of characters that you wouldn't get to play because you're not physically right. I could play six-foot-two mafia enforcers. I could play a German professor. ... If you can match the voice to what he looks like, you're home free. And I just thought, this is spectacular. I mean, it's the ultimate job. You don't have to memorize. You can just read all the lines. They don't care how you look. You can show up looking like hell. ...
And the community of voiceover people are so welcoming. They're so wonderful. And once they realize that you're committed and you're not showing up late and you don't have minders and, you know, showing up in a limo or any of that nonsense, you immediately become one of them. I was accepted in the voiceover community. ... I said "I don't care if I'm ever on camera again. In fact, this might be better because you don't have to age on camera." I'm always shocked when I see myself. I go "Wow, am I old!"
On his trepidations of coming back for the new Star Wars films
My initial reaction is that we shouldn't do it. I mean, you can never go home again. And I was sure, I said, Harrison [Ford]'s not gonna do it. He's got so much going on and he gets frustrated when those movies are brought up so often. So I said I know he's not going to do it. But when I read in the press that he'd signed to do I thought, Oh my God, I've just been drafted. Because if I say no and Harrison and Carrie come back. I'll be the most hated man in nerddom. So I thought, maybe it's fate. Maybe I should go back. So I did.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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