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From whiny farm boy to the saviour of a galaxy far, far away, Mark Hamill is the legendary hero of cinema’s most iconic sci-fi franchise. With his final(?) performance as Luke Skywalker behind him, the last Jedi reflects on a career that’s taken in TV, th
Mark Hamill reflects on a lifetime spent in a galaxy far, far away.
ALL I WANTED WAS A STEADY JOB IN SHOW BUSINESS, AND I GOT WAY MORE THAN I EVER DREAMED WAS POSSIBLE.
Luke Skywalker is staring out the window of the Langham Hotel on a Hoth-like Monday morning in London. Sorry, Mark Hamill is the one window-gazing. The confusion is understandable given his appearance – dressed in practical slacks, shoes and a navy jumper, he’s sitting cross-legged like the grizzled Jedi Master meditating precariously over the sheer cliffs of Ahch-To. The only difference here: he’s not floating three feet in the air.
Ahead of him lies a day of press for the home ent release of The Last Jedi – Hamill’s fifth and possibly final outing as Luke Skywalker. It’s a film that’s split Star Wars fans. Some (including Hamill) consider it the new Empire Strikes Back, a chapter too shocking to be fully appreciated so soon after release. Whereas others (including Hamill when he first read Rian Johnson’s script) saw the treatment of Luke as a betrayal, the actor admitting in early interviews that he told Johnson, “I pretty much fundamentally disagree with every choice you’ve made for this character.”
Having lived with Luke for 41 years, Hamill’s misgivings were inevitable. What’s more remarkable is that he has no misgivings about his involvement in George Lucas’ monolithic space saga. “I was content, even before Star Wars came back,” he explains. And you believe him despite the double-edged sword Star Wars proved. Harrison Ford’s flyboy charisma was the perfect fit for Indy, and Carrie Fisher carved a career as a writer, but Hamill was left behind, too closely associated with Skywalker for filmmakers to separate actor from character.
In spite, or perhaps because, of this, Hamill doesn’t have a shred of ego. Supremely humble, he never passes up an opportunity to praise the work of others, or express his gratitude for the hand life has dealt him. The son of a Navy Captain (not a Sith Lord), Hamill spent his early years moving from school to school before majoring in drama at Los Angeles City College. TV bit parts followed, including a role in sitcom The Texas Wheelers. The show was cancelled after four episodes but, as luck would have it, Film Brat George Lucas was holding auditions for ‘Star Wars: The Adventures Of Luke Starkiller’ on the other side of Hollywood...
Beyond a galaxy far, far away, Hamill’s superb in Samuel Fuller’s philosophical war movie The Big Red One; he poked fun at his past in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back; and he’s quietly brilliant as a well-meaning child abductor in Brigsby Bear – a love letter to the obsessive fandoms he’s spent his life around. He also found a vocal role almost as iconic as Skywalker in the Joker, a character he’s played for more than 20 years, across TV, films and videogames, winning a BAFTA in the process.
But, even during the wilderness years post-ROTJ, Skywalker never went away. A perennial favourite at Star Wars conventions, he’s generous with his time and a natural-born raconteur. Watch The Director And The Jedi – a candid doc bundled with The Last Jedi Blu-ray – and you’ll realise it never stops, Hamill entertaining the crew with dreadful Star Wars music title puns (“I Wanna Hold Your Han”, “The Luke Of Love”) even in the pouring rain on Skellig Michael.
Now 66, Hamill admits “It was scary [and] intimidating” to return to the role after so many years. But the risk paid off, the film providing Luke a poetic end worthy of the Skywalker legend. It’s up to J.J. Abrams whether Hamill will return for Episode IX. But either way Luke Skywalker isn’t dead, he’s likely sitting cross-legged, staring out the nearest window…
Let’s start with the most important question: what tastes better, blue milk or space-cow milk?
[laughs] Well, the green milk of The Last Jedi was coconut water enhanced in postproduction to glow green like that. It was quite tasty. The original milk was long-life milk, the kind that you don’t have to refrigerate. They put blue food colouring in it. But they add chemicals. It’s oily and sweet and ghastly. Gag-inducing, even.
In The Director And The Jedi documentary you say, “Luke is not my character to decide. He belongs to other people. They just rent him out to me.” Do you not feel a sense of ownership over him?
Well, I do, but I have to resist that. It’s above my pay grade to say, “Well, I’m not going to say this. He should say this.” That being said, Rian’s highly collaborative. I said to him, “A Jedi would never give up. Even if he had to regroup…” He said, “Well, you picked Kylo Ren. You thought he was the chosen one. And look what happened.” I said, “Yeah, it’s like I picked the next Hitler. But I could get over it. I would try to make amends. I wouldn’t just go, ‘Oh, my bad. Now I’m just checking out and hanging out on an island somewhere.’” That was my argument.
So how did you come to terms with playing Luke the way Rian requested?
I had to come up with another incident. Because look, there’s a huge gap between Return Of The Jedi and The Force Awakens. So what happens in that interim? It’s important to the actor to justify it in
a way. Because even though it’s a fantasy, you want it to relate somehow to real life. I’m from the ’60s generation: Love is all you need; the Beatles. I thought that by the time we’d get in power, there’ll be no more war, there’ll be no more discrimination, pot will be legal. I’m only right about one thing. My point is, when you look at it, we’re failures. The world is worse than it was when we were kids. We’ve been in a war for 17 years. There’s terrible racial discrimination, and white nationalists. What I’m saying is, you can use that for the story. Luke feels that he’s a failure.
returning to star wars was almost too high profile for comfort
Also on the documentary, producer Ram Bergman says you’re not playing Luke in The Last Jedi, you’re playing ObiWan. Is that how you saw it?
To a certain extent, in terms of my purpose in the story. Now, the young protagonist is Rey. Daisy Ridley is the girl from nowhere who’s discovering this inner power she didn’t know she had. I mean, I’ve seen aspects of my career as Luke reflected in so many of the characters. I was the cocky pilot. Now we have Oscar Isaac handling that. I was the headstrong, impetuous risk-taker. Now we have John Boyega. It really is moving it to the new generation. It can’t be about the past. I still miss George Lucas; it’s just not the same. But it can’t be the same, not if they want to expand it and move on. I mean, apparently, once this trilogy’s over, there’ll be no vestiges of the Skywalker family ever again. Well, that’s good. It’s liberating. George created such a vast canvas, the possibilities are endless.
There are a couple of really lovely candid moments on the doc, like when you stumble across Frank Oz performing Yoda on set...
I didn’t expect that. It was like, “Today, you’re going to rehearse with Frank.” “Oh boy!” Because Frank and I have remained pals, and I hadn’t seen him in a long time. That was completely unanticipated that I would get emotional about seeing him with Yoda again. It brought back such a flood of memories. That happened on the Millennium Falcon, too. I said, “Oh boy, we’re going to go see the set.” What struck me was how exact the details were. Every oil drip and dent and scuff mark and hanging pipe. Even the smell was exactly the way it was. I guess it’s like going back to a childhood home you lived in.
Were you disappointed to not have a chance to re-team with Harrison Ford?
I said it to them, “Guys, I want to let you know, the fan world is going to be really upset that we don’t even briefly unite.” I was wrong – I was still hanging on to the past. It’s a whole new generation. Yeah, it’s good to see the old-timers, but they want to get on with it and see the new characters, and more power to them.
How did you feel after watching The Last for the first time?
Jedi
I saw it in a screening room with just my wife, and I didn’t know what to think. There’s just so much information going on. There’s so many things I didn’t expect. I’d read it, but to see it realised... There’s all this mind-boggling action, and then they cut to my island where you kind of go, “That’s a relief. It’s just Porgs here. I’m OK with the Caretakers.” I just didn’t know what to think. I was just overwhelmed. The second time, I liked it. The third time,
I thought, ‘This is really good.’ The fourth and last time I saw it, I said, “Oh my God, this is one of the best ones ever.”
A generation sees you as an icon. Is that something that weighs heavily on you?
No, no. If anything, it’s the fans that I revere, because they’re the ones with you through the triumphs, the near-misses, the flat-out failures. Because I thought, “Star Wars has had its day. We’ll move on, and something bright and shiny will come along.” And it did! Harry Potter came along, and Lord Of The Rings, all of these things. But Star Wars never really went away. There’s a whole segment of people that know more about it than I do. They read the novels, the comic books. They play the games. My son, Nathan, said, “Hey Dad, did you know that Luke’s married?” I said, “You’re kidding.” “No, it’s Mara Jade. Look, she’s a smoking-hot redhead.” I went, “Leave it to Lucasfilm to give me a girlfriend 11 years after I stop playing the character.” [laughs]
Let’s go back a few decades. By the time
Star Wars came around in 1977, you’d been working in TV for 10 years. Did you think you’d never get your break?
It’s funny, because I had just come off a television series called The Texas Wheelers which, at the time, was innovative, because it was one of the first comedies without a laugh track. I’ll tell you, the critics adored it. It was the anti-Waltons. The father was a drunk, played by Jack Elam, this marvellous character actor who’s in a million westerns, and it was Gary Busey’s first big role in Hollywood, as my older brother. I was a compulsive liar, a bragger, a womaniser. It was so well-written. And it got cancelled. We made 13 episodes, they put four on the air, and then yanked it.
That must have been hard to take...
I said, “This is my breakout role.” I was really depressed. I thought, ‘You know, I’m going to go back to Broadway and start all over again from scratch; find some great play and do that.’ But the truth of the matter is, if The Texas Wheelers had been a big hit, I would have been unavailable for Star Wars. Things happen for a reason.
At what point did you realise that Star Wars was going to shape pop culture?
On the day it opened, I was dubbing the
35mm print, because they opened it, I think, in 30 theatres – a very limited release in 70mm. I said to the driver on the way to the ADR studio, “Can we drive by Grauman’s [Chinese Theatre]? I want to see what it looks like.” Lines around the block. I thought it would be a word-of-mouth movie, where the hardcore fans would see it and tell the general public, “Hey, this is really funny, it’s charming.”
So you knew on the day of release?
That was an indicator, although I thought it was an anomaly: ‘Well, it’s just Hollywood. Nothing else is out.’ And as a genre fan myself, I’d go first day, first show, to any ghost movie or horror film or whatever. But then we were coming from Vancouver or something. It’d been open only like a week or so. We landed in Chicago, and as we’re taxiing in, I see all these crowds from far away. I turned to Harrison and Carrie and said, “Hey, you guys, there must be somebody famous on this plane.” We’re looking around for a football player or a movie star. And as we got in closer and closer, I said, “Carrie, look, there’s somebody that has your furry headphones. And Harrison, there’s a guy who has your vest.” There were all these “May the Force be with you” homemade signs. That’s when we all looked around and said, “Wow. Something’s happening that we certainly didn’t anticipate.”
animation opened up a new world of character acting for me
And it just kept on growing...
It defied all of our expectations. It only cost, like, $9m. I said, “I think this thing will make $35m or $40m, easy. I bet we’ll do a sequel because of that.” I predicted it would be bigger than Planet Of The Apes but not everybody felt that way. I got to know the crew, and they were comfortable with me. I’d go to dinner with them, and they’d say, “Between you and me, it’s a little bit rubbish, isn’t it?” I said, “What, the movie?” They said, “Well, yeah. It won’t be on at night. It’ll only be matinees.”
What made them think it was bad?
They didn’t really have anything to compare it to. I guess Doctor Who, Dan Dare in the comic strips. It was such an idiosyncratic American movie. It had elements of Flash Gordon. There was cheesiness, but it was by design. But science-fiction is usually very dry. I mean,