Mark Interviews 1980+

Mark Hamill

The hero of STAR WARS and The Empire Strikes Back is not just another pretty face - although Hamill has been fighting that battle (not to mention stuffed dogs) since his career started 13 years ago.

Mark Hamill, it seems, has always been surrounded by the unusual. Before he explored Dagobah or Bespin with his droid companion R2-D2 in The Empire Strikes Back, he first had to confront some Earthly challenges, such as auditioning before a stuffed Lassie.

As Hamill tells it, the actor was 18 years old when he first started breaking ground in the profession. One of his earliest memories of that time was of being dropped off at the intersection of Pico and LaCienega, in Los Angeles, with directions for getting to the MGM studios. Embarrassed to hitchhike, and unaware that some California streets go on "forever", Hamill decided to walk the distance. Three hours later he arrived two-and-a-half hours late for an interview.

Although that scheduled meeting fell through ("They couldn't accept the fact that there was an actor in L.A. without an automobile," Hamill explains), on that same day Hamill had the opportunity to meet Rudd Weatherwax, the trainer of Lassie, and read for him in the hopes of being drafted for a syndicated TV show. He relates part of that experience - his first introduction to Hollywood.

"I couldn't help but notice a big, stuffed, dead collie on the floor, lying on its side, stiffly. What do you say? It's one of those things. Eventually Weatherwax said, 'I think we'd like you to read. Certainly.' And we read this scene where Lassie is supposed to come out of the river, or something like that, and we were trying to nurse her back to health with hot soup. I thought to myself, 'This is so strange, for this guy to have his animal stuffed like that.' It gave me the creeps... This was the real thing, glass eyes, everything...."

The jarring experience did not, however, weaken Hamill's desire to act. For, though he is known to millions as Luke Skywalker of the STAR WARS trilogy, Hamill is a 13-year-veteran of the business with over 140 television shows (including a nine-month stint on General Hospital, The Texas Wheelers, The Partridge Family, Cannon, The FBI, Night Gallery), four TV movies (Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Mallory, Delancey Street and Eric), several major feature films (including Corvette Summer, The Big Red One and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia), and stage plays, including Elephant Man, to his credit.

"I'm really a proponent of 'the play's the thing' -- go where the best part is," Hamill says. "So that's what I'm doing."

One excellent role that Hamill had just wrapped at the time of this interview was his latest, and last, installment as Luke Skywalker in Revenge of the Jedi, which, when it premieres on May 25, will culminate the first-to-be-filmed STAR WARS trilogy.

"It's ironic that the last one would be the best one. But not really. The roles reflect the growth of Luke. I mean, it's not the most satisfying thing in the world to play that sort of, 'Gollee - you don't believe in the Force, do you?' character. But I felt at the time of the first film that it would be popular enough to make the second film and I thought that will pay because I'll be more mature in Empire, which I was. I enjoyed the role more in Empire, and now, of course, in Jedi. Hey, hot bananas," Hamill laughs, "I'm a card-carrying Jedi in this one. But, see, the thing is, which Jedi is it? Is it Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda or me or the other? It's so confusing, too. George has so many ways he can go. We gave him at least three alternatives in the way it ends and, if he dubs onto people wearing masks and such, he can do even more than that.

I like the fact that he surprises us. It's like opening a Christmas present, not being sure of what you're getting. Like, from your grandmother -- 'Oh, I hope it's not a shirt. I hope it's going to be a hula-hoop or something fun.' But if it's from George, it'll be a toy. He doesn't send shirts."

Hamill's portrayal of Luke Skywalker has spanned six years, on and off. And, although he has an obvious fondness for the space-faring teenager, Hamill has discovered that bringing him to life has been as hard as any acting job he's ever had.

"The thing is," Hamill points out, "he goes away from me. I do my job and I walk away from it for about a year and then I come back and dub the dialogue in its final preparation. Then I go out and do some big publicity bash for those movies and the publicity things really do drain you... Fortunately for me, I do love the movies, so it's not a chore and it's not insincere."

In days gone by, one would not find a hint of STAR WARS memorabilia in the New York home of Mark and Marilou Hamill. Their son Nathan, 3, has changed all that now. When he's not toting Kenner STAR WARS figures around in a Barnum and Bailey Circus bag, Nathan can be found staging an all-out battle between Luke Skywalker and the Wampa Ice Creature. The Wampa usually wins.

"He's very intelligent," boasts Nathan's proud father. "You ask him who plays Threepio and he says, 'Tony Daniels'. You ask him who plays Chewbacca and he says, 'Peter Mayhew', perfectly, so that a stranger would understand it.

One time he was on the set of Jedi and he's saying, 'Daddy, you go with Darth Vader...' and he said all this stuff and the producer goes, 'This kid's a security risk.' George had some things that were very sensitive so I said, 'George, how about if I do the dialogue, but I won't listen to it?' He said, 'Okay, do that.' Somewhat sarcastically, of course.

What happened on the last film," Hamill continues, "was some wardrobe people were getting wardrobe for the extras, Imperial officers or something, and they came to the set to show Irv Kershner the costumes and they saw me cutting Vader's head off. Well, of course, they leaked to the press in London that I killed Darth Vader which, in a sense, I did, but it was a dream sequence. That's why you just can't believe the kind of rumors that go on.

If you were, say, someone who was making a prop and you got an order for a big cage or something that had certain specifications, you could probably guess from what your blueprints were how it was going to be used. It must be able to hold three actors and this and that. So, you go to lunch and say, 'They all get captured by these giant bees that put them in these cages.' I've even heard rumors that I like so much that I've asked George if we can make them true."

Without delving further into those rumors or breaking the air-tight security surrounding the film, Hamill reports that filming Jedi was akin "to senior year in high school. You approach it with a mixture of emotions. You are very relieved to be finished with it, but at the same time, you're going to miss all your friends. It was nostalgic.

Let me tell you, Harrison Ford and I... well, everyone knows Harrison comes back. It's listed in the credits and he's certainly not going to spend the whole movie as a coffee table... but we were standing side by side in the desert and it just struck me. There's tons of monsters standing around and I said, 'Well, how are you going to get us off the road to Tatooine, buddy boy?' It was just like Bob Hope on the Road. Here we are, two men rapidly approaching middle age, acting silly, shooting monsters."
Hamill is well aware that his youthful good looks have brought him roles that many actors his age couldn't even test for. But it's a two-pronged blessing that has brought with it a bountiful share of frustrations. After completing STAR WARS and The Empire Strikes Back, Hamill was fully anticipating his career to take off in a variety of areas. What he discovered, however, was that the impact of the films forced him to reform his career.

"At the same time," he says, "I realize that I'm not always going to look the way I look in those movies. I think it's a matter of time. Maybe I should go away for a few years and come back as a more Martin Sheen kind of middle-aged person because, right now, I'm too old to play children and too young, or too young-looking, to play someone who you would believe has lived life."

One way Hamill chose to counteract the public image of him, while fully flexing his acting abilities, was to pursue a role on Broadway. At one point, he went up for a part in Amadeus and, instead, was offered the lead in Elephant Man. From the moment he accepted, he had but 21 days before his Broadway opening.

"I was terrified," he recalls. "It was so kamikaze. The one wonderful thing is that I am stage-trained. I do all kinds of dialects and I'm a very physical actor. It's a lovely thing because, in a way, it's a tribute to my performance that people really think that I'm gawky, sort of fun, sincere, impetuous, whatever... Luke."

After three weeks of rehearsal Hamill performed in the Elephant Man for but three weeks before it closed. "What they thought, I think, was that all they had to say was Luke Skywalker in the Elephant Man and it would sell out in 17 weeks like David Bowie did. But it doesn't work that way, mostly, I think, because it was three-and-a-half years old when I got to it. They did a play, a movie, a TV version, so people had it coming out of their ears. Someone said to me that if John Barrymore came back from the grave, he wouldn't have kept it open.

Economically, I can tell you that if everyone that was at the stage door waiting to meet me had bought tickets, I'd still be in it. Because, God bless them, they had their Superman II tickets and their Raiders of the Lost Ark tickets and they were on their way home. But they couldn't spend $30 to see me even if they wanted to."

With the STAR WARS audience in mind, Hamill is contemplating a childrens' theater piece "which is scary and funny and full of magic and wonder, but that would be fun for the adults to see, too. Maybe I could play three or four parts -- an old man, a young man. Maybe have one of those characters be a Luke Skywalker-type just so I touch all bases and have fun for myself."

Like the movie-going public, Mark Hamill is anxiously awaiting a George Lucas Christmas next May. Only then will he, like we, discover what the master plan holds for Luke Skywalker and his cavalry of adventurous comrades. Until then, keep your eyes on the stage. Our guess is that that's where Mark Hamill will turn up next.

Starlog, December 1982