Mark Interviews 2000+

The Man who fell to Earth

In a galaxy far, far away from STAR WARS, Mark Hamill lives life on his own terms.

When Mark Hamill was a kid, he loved puppets, magic tricks, comic books, and cartoons. "I thought I wanted to be an animator, until I got stuck on Charles Schulz and Peanuts," recalls the actor. "Then I wanted to be a cartoonist. A cartoonist creates his whole universe without any input. Charles Schulz had a little workshop, like my pool house," he says, nodding toward the backyard of his home in the Malibu hills. "He never had to leave his house. That really appealed to me."

But in fifth grade, the kids at school wanted to put on a variety show and needed a host. They chose Mark for the job, because he could do impressions. His Yogi Bear, in particular, killed. "It was my defense mechanism against getting beaten up: self-deprecating humor and pop-culture references. A handy weapon." Still, he was terrified. All those people, looking at him... But he had an idea: He'd cohost the show with his Jerry Mahoney dummy. That way, people would be looking at his dummy, not him. It killed. And he loved it. He realized what he wanted to do was perform - as long as he could disappear into the act. So he decided to become an actor. "And it just kind of went from there," he says.

Where Mark Hamill's life went from that fateful decision depends on your point of view. The most commonly held one is that after becoming a global icon as a farmboy-turned-Jedi in the STAR WARS trilogy, Hamill... disappeared. His attempts at capitalizing on the phenomenon to further his career - most notably with a starring role in 1978's Corvette Summer and a turn in 1980's The Big Red One - took him nowhere. Since 1983's Return of the Jedi, the actor, whose boyishly handsome face was damaged in a 1977 car accident, has popped up here and there. Geek stuff mostly. The Trickster in the '90s superhero TV series The Flash. A bizarre, lightsaber-wielding cameo in Kevin Smith's 2001 comedy Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Put simply, Hamill went from being America's favorite action hero to America's favorite 'Where Are They Now?' question.

But this is not how the man himself sees things. Hence, 'Where did you go?' is not one of his favorite questions. He far prefers 'What are you up to?' It contains no assumptions, no judgment. "If I'm going to become a nostalgia act, I might as well hang it up and teach," says Hamill, looking fit and healthy, the evidence of that car accident now obscured by the normal wear and tear of middle age. Believe it: Luke Skywalker turns 53 this month.

Hamill does live in the real world. He gets the joke. Doesn't find it funny, but he gets it. "A late-night comedian made a crack not long ago that I must be dying to get on The Surreal Life," he says. "Sometimes I'm startled by how different people [see my life]." Hamill insists he never yearned for Harrison Ford-esque stardom. "If STAR WARS is their only frame of reference, of course. But that's not how I've progressed, not when I've worked so steadily, and rewardingly, in areas people don't expect."

Like theater. He spent most of the '80s on the boards, both on Broadway and off: The Elephant Man, Amadeus, Harrigan 'n Hart, for which he earned a Drama Desk nod. Last year, he starred in a Broadway production of Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks as a gay dance instructor. Hamill got mixed reviews, depending on how critics felt about the manic energy (over-the-top or enthusiastic?) he brought to the role. The show closed after 30 performances.

Hamill has also found his way back to a childhood love: animation. In the late '80s, when asked by an interviewer what role he most wanted to play, he said he aspired to nothing higher than voicing a character on The Simpsons. After reading the quote, the people behind the Emmy-winning early-'90s Batman animated series cast him as the Joker. Yes, the Joker. "To this day, people come up and say, 'I can't believe the guy who played the Joker was Luke Skywalker,'" says Batman producer Bruce Timm. Hamill parlayed his Joker success into a career as one of the top vocal talents in the cartoon and videogame fields; he even owns a piece of the hit Wing Commander game franchise. Recently, he voiced a character in a new series called Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! And in 1998, he finally got that Simpsons shot, in an episode playing... himself. He nearly said no after reading the script. "I got on my high horse. 'I have never appeared in the Luke costume for money! I have never done dinner theater!'" But then his three kids - teenage daughter Chelsea and adult sons Nathan and Griffin, Simpsons fans all - told him to get over himself. "From the mouths of babes," he says.

The rest of his résumé is sprinkled with direct-to-video schlock. "You know those actors who have a sense for how they should be used?" asks Hamill. "I don't think I have that." So there hasn't exactly been a run of compelling, or lucrative, work. But thanks to his STAR WARS royalties and some smart financial planning, Hamill is doing just fine. He has owned his spacious California ranch home since the late '70s, bought with money earned from his pre-STAR WARS TV work, including a stint on General Hospital and a supporting role on a short-lived sitcom called The Texas Wheelers. STAR WARS, he says, gave him "walking-away money," which allowed him to both pursue theater and be "the kind of dad that's involved, that can wrestle on the floor with his kids."

And if you ask Mark Hamill, his career is just getting more exciting by the minute. Earlier this year saw the straight-to-DVD release of his directorial debut, Comic Book: The Movie, a rambling mockumentary about comic-book fanboys. There are plans for a film adaptation of The Black Pearl, a comic he wrote in 1996. And he just got financing for his passion project, Fort Franny, a show for kids about the secret lives of pets in New York City that will mix animation and puppets. "I have a nerd soul," he says, "and I'm embracing it."

In other words, from the perspective of that kid who once dreamed of making cartoons and working with puppets, Mark Hamill pretty much has the life he always wanted. "From one perspective, people will go, 'He's no Harrison Ford.' I'm not," says Hamill. "Having said that, you can subsist and flourish on whatever end of the entertainment food chain you find yourself in. I've been doing it for so long, it's not even an issue anymore."

Does he resent STAR WARS? Absolutely not, he says, checking his watch. (A Fort Franny meeting looms, and he can't wait to talk cartoons and puppets.) If anything, he misses it. "There is a part of me that misses that whole creative spark you felt when you were associated with Lucasfilm," he says. If there's a STAR WARS TV series in the works after the prequels, as is the rumor, he'd love to work on it as a writer or director. But he doesn't miss Luke. Or at least, being known only as Luke. To a generation of people, "I'm just a face on a lunchbox, T-shirt, and underwear." Part of the appeal of voice-over work, he says, is the anonymity. "I live in a sort of insular world," says Hamill. "It's mostly my family, my house, staying home and working. When it gets too much, I just say, 'That's not me, it's Luke.' I just have to keep going forward, unless I just want to retire altogether."

And with that, Mark Hamill hustles off to puppets and 'toons, a man eager to get back to playing.

Entertainment Weekly, September 24, 2004