Mark Hamill Interviews
Hamill returns to Broadway - Without the Lightsaber
Try as you might, you'll have a hard time finding Mark Hamill's most famous acting job in his Playbill biography.
It's there, to be sure. You just have to examine the booklet a little harder. There, past Hamill's theater and movie credits, is the line, ''He has earned international acclaim for his tireless efforts to thwart the Dark Side.''
That wink and a nod is as close as Hamill gets to listing the role that forever changed his life: Luke Skywalker. As for the STAR WARS films, they aren't noted at all.
''It throws off the bell curve,'' Hamill says during an interview at the Belasco Theater, where he's starring in a new Broadway play. ''It throws off the way that you're graded because it can be your only frame of reference.''
Hamill is 52 now and wants other parts of his resume to shine: the non-Jedi movies, his hundreds of cartoon voiceovers, his comic book work, the CD-ROMs and his Broadway stints. He wants to be known for more than just the guy with a lightsaber.
''It seems to me that it's semi-fraudulent for me to be still playing on it,'' he says. ''It seems to me that I just owe the public new product. If I wanted to be a nostalgia artist, boy, I could embrace it wholeheartedly.''
Hamill's newest product is Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, a two-actor comedy written by Richard Alfieri that co-stars Polly Bergen as a formidable Florida retiree who hires an acerbic dance instructor, played by Hamill, for six weeks of lessons.
Though the two have a rocky start, they soon establish a witty camaraderie, sharing their lives between the swing, tango, Viennese waltz, fox-trot and cha-cha.
''Rarely do you read something where the characters so jump off the page,'' says Hamill. ''Within two pages, you've established that he has anger-management problems and has no business dealing with the public, and she's just as salty and intractable as he is. That makes for great drama.''
There's been drama off-stage, too, as Hamill struggles with his footwork. ''It's so frustrating because your body's not doing what your mind wants it to do. It doesn't come naturally to me so I have to work 10 times as hard as anybody else to make it look effortless,'' he says, laughing.
Hamill was offered the role when the show made a stop at Miami's Coconut Grove Playhouse. Arthur Allan Seidelman, the show's director, had worked with Hamill on the film Walking Across Egypt and remembered his earlier Broadway work.
''His is a story of an actor whose career was captured by one, enormous success - and success in a genre where the effect is more important than the subtlety of the work,'' says Seidelman. ''So people forgot that this is really a gifted actor.''
Hamill was initially suspicious of the offer, prepared for yet another role that leeched off his Skywalker days, ''I read anything that's offered me with sort of a jaundiced eye,'' he says. ''I figure, 'How good can it be that I'm going to be their first choice?'''
Hamill's jaundiced eye developed after he blasted into cinemas in 1977 as the milquetoast hero of STAR WARS. He was 25 and his previous work included General Hospital, One Day at a Time and a guest spot on The Partridge Family.
Before the first STAR WARS installment's premiere, Hamill was in a car crash that required reconstructive facial surgery. He returned for The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983.
While co-stars Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher emerged from the blockbuster and thrived, Hamill struggled. His subsequent movies were mostly straight-to-video fare such as Corvette Summer, Time Runner and Village of the Damned.
On stage, Hamill faired better, playing the title roles of Amadeus and The Elephant Man on Broadway, earning a Drama Desk nomination for Harrigan 'n Hart and enjoying a stint in the off-Broadway play Room Service.
On TV, he made appearances on shows like V.I.P., Amazing Stories and SeaQuest DSV. He hosted CNBC's magazine-style show .COM and developed the Wing Commander CD-ROM games. He also lent his voice to hundreds of TV cartoons, specializing in villains like the Joker on various Batman series and the Hobgoblin on Spider-Man.
His labor of love has been The Black Pearl, a five-part graphic novel he wrote about a vigilante with a costume cobbled together from army surplus stores. And his film directing debut, the fictional documentary Comic Book: The Movie will soon be released by Miramax Pictures.
Hamill has mostly skipped the STAR WARS conventions and hasn't been above going the William Shatner route, mocking himself on The Simpsons, 3rd Rock From the Sun and Just Shoot Me. In Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Hamill played a goofy villain with a lightsaber and an oversized fist.
He also has had to handle the backbiting side of celebrity. The father of three - Nathan, 24, Griffin, 20, and Chelsea, 15 - Hamill felt Hollywood rudeness most recently when his youngest experienced show biz snobbery.
''I don't mind the Hollywood caste system. I know the tenuous position I'm in on the entertainment food chain. I don't get invited to A-list affairs. Me? I'm listless,'' he says. ''If anything, it hardens my resolve to say, 'Ah, you're wrong. I'm going to show you by doing this or that or the other.'
''But when you do it to my children, that makes me go berserk. And she started being excluded from this one's birthday party or that one's bat mitzvah because I'm not A-list. It really burns my hide when it comes through because they're not in show business - I am.''
When Hamill reflects on his career, he doesn't judge himself against the millions of dollars per film that former co-star Ford now commands. In fact, there's a measure of pity: Hamill has avoided a straitjacket.
''The assumption is that since I didn't become a big, A-list action movie star, I've somehow blown it. And to me, I'm so relieved that I was able to become somebody who could do everything from the sleazy producer in Room Service to the guy who ages to 110 on Amazing Stories,'' he says.
''In a way, I have it easy. If I modeled my career after somebody else, I'd be sorely disappointed. I also think it's a work in progress,'' he adds. ''My best work is ahead of me.''Kenai Peninsula Online, October 30, 2003