I Don’t Have to be a Leading Man

The newspaper’s headline was brutal: “Where Have You Gone, Mark Hamill?” asked The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette in 1999.

The story’s answer practically jeered: “Luke Skywalker doing a voice on The Woody Woodpecker Show? A supporting voice? Yep.”

Yet the biggest blow was yet to come: Hamill, star of the world’s biggest sci-fi franchise, would continue to mainly do voice work for animated projects and video games (much of it outstanding, and he loved the work, but still … so-called “face for radio” gigs) for well over a decade.

In the past few years, all that’s changed. Hamill, 73, not only has been enjoying a late-career resurgence, he’s arguably been doing his finest on-camera work ever, and across a wide variety of projects: He played a dynastic family’s grim fixer in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, Bert Kreischer’s eccentric father in the comedy The Machine, a wise grandfather in Mike Flanagan’s meditative The Life of Chuck and, this month, a menacing military leader in Lionsgate’s dystopian Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, about a contest where teen boys walk until death.

Ironically, it took Hamill returning to the pigeonholing role that made him famous — in 2017’s The Last Jedi — for the industry to widely see him in an entirely new light: Suddenly there was Mark Hamill, older, grayer, with a gravelly voice and a level of gravitas that shed his Tatooine farm-boy past. His dialogue delivery popped (“This is not going to go the way you think …” “Amazing, every word of what you just said was wrong …”) — a talent honed from those thousands of hours in recording booths doing voice work.

“I certainly didn’t expect to have this sudden burst of life so late in the game,” Hamill says. “I should be spending time wandering the beaches with a metal detector. I can’t explain why, all of a sudden, I have five features this year.”

The Malibu resident and father of three — who has been married to his wife, Marilou York, for 47 years — opens up to THR about his career ups and downs, his latest project and whether he ever gets to enjoy a day without once having to think about Star Wars.

Stephen King wrote The Long Walk in 1967, and it was seen as an allegory for the Vietnam War. What do you think this story means today?

It’s relevant in a way it wasn’t even a few months ago — if you follow the news. It’s meant to be a dystopian future where an authoritarian government imposes this ghastly ritual [of a contest where teen boys compete until death]. It was almost hard for me to get past the premise. I thought, “I don’t know if I can even see this, forget about being in it.” I’ve always admired Francis Lawrence as a director and wanted to work with him and thought, “If I turn this down, my chances of ever working with him again will plummet.” Then I realized the premise is just an attention-grabber to get you into the story. The real heart and soul of both the novel and now the movie is the experiences of these young guys enduring this ordeal.

You’ve described your father as a “very authoritarian” career naval officer. Was there a bit of that in playing the film’s merciless The Major?

He was an authoritarian. And I remember him doing inspections of our bedrooms like we were in the service. But I don’t want to give people the idea that he was a brutal taskmaster. He wasn’t. But I’ve seen The Major, because when we were stateside, we lived on a Marine base, and I would cross the parking lot and saw young recruits being put through their paces while they were being screamed at. One time — and I blocked this out for years, it came back to me making The Long Walk — it was 108 degrees and one kid vomited. The guy in charge gave him a spoon and made him eat it. It was so traumatic. So I know who this character is.

What has it been like the past few years when it seems like — in your early 70s — you’re arguably more appreciated and in-demand for dramatic on-camera acting roles than at any time?

There was a point about five years ago where I thought that it’s not easy getting older, and it’s even harder when you’re doing it on camera. So I thought that I’ve had enough on-camera. I’m going to continue working but in voiceover only. Then Mike Flanagan and his producer, Trevor Macy, contacted me to do The Fall of the House of Usher.

I was playing the family lawyer to a really evil family — a soulless, truly evil guy. And I loved it. It was minimalist. It was unlike anything I had ever done, and it sort of rekindled my satisfaction of doing things on camera. Then, with The Life of Chuck, I’ve seen it now three times. My wife has seen it like six times. She says, “It’s my favorite thing you’ve ever done.”

My suspicion is that as much as The Fall of the House of Usher helped, it was The Last Jedi that really got you widely seen in a very different light with a new look and more gravitas. Which is ironic, as the role launched your career, pigeonholed you a bit but then helped relaunch your career and this time didn’t pigeonhole you.

I had real reservations about coming back. I thought it would be a mistake. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice — they should really focus on a new generation of characters. And I thought, “Well, Harrison [Ford] is not going to do it anyway.” You could see his irritation with constantly having to talk about Han Solo. Once I saw in the press that he had accepted, I felt like I had been drafted — because if I’m the only one [of the original trio, along with the late Carrie Fisher] who says no, I’ll be the most hated man in nerd-dom.

What lesson do you wish that you had learned earlier in your career?

Don’t sweat the smallest stuff. The older you get, the less you care — but I don’t mean that you don’t care about the work or your values. It’s the things that you would obsess about before: “Why did they write that about me?” People are going to say what they’re going to say regardless. So focus on the work and less about the image.

Your interest in voice work goes back quite a long time, right?

I knew from a really young age — before kindergarten — that I wanted to be in show business. I saw a Walt Disney show where Clarence Nash stepped up to the microphone — this white-haired, distinguished gentleman in a suit — and he did Donald Duck’s voice. I’d never thought before, “Oh, of course there must be people doing these voices!” I said, “If there’s a job like that, I want it.” [Then, during the 1970s], I was on a soap opera, and this actor said, “You should enjoy this now, Mark, because when you get to be 30, you’re going to look like an old kid.” I laughed it off but thought, “Maybe he’s right.” Some young actors can’t make that transition to adult actors. Voiceover is everything I want. You can sound like you’re 6 feet tall, 300 pounds.

The Joker being the best known of the bunch, I assume.

It was right after they announced that Michael Keaton was cast as Batman, and the fan community freaked out, “Oh, he’s Mr. Mom. He’s a comic actor.” So even though I really wanted the part, I thought, “If they freaked out about Mr. Mom being Batman, how are they going to feel about Luke Skywalker being the Joker? There’s no way I’m going to get this!” And because I believed that, I was completely calm and relaxed. I just let it rip. I drove out of the parking lot really cocky: “Top that, try to find a better Joker than that.” People didn’t even believe it was me. They thought it was treated or sped up or who knows what. But it was a fundamental reason I got so many interesting roles in voiceover.

After Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy died in 2022, you said you were done voicing the Joker. Has Warner Bros. tried to get you back?

When they’d asked [about a new project], “Do want you to do the Joker?” My only question was, “Is Kevin doing Batman?” If he’s in, I don’t even have to read it. I don’t know whether they’ve tried to get me back, but my agent would know. But not to my knowledge. It’s like with Star Wars. You complete a role, you do your best, and when it’s over, you let it go.

During the early days of the first Trump administration, you used to record Trump tweets in the voice of the Joker to mock him. Did you ever hear from Warner Bros. or anyone asking you to stop?

No. I was always politically active, I just never was public about it. But I’ve been a Democrat all my life. What brings it out is social media. Normally, I just keep my opinions to myself. You want to appeal to everyone. I don’t hate MAGA. I just think they’re a cult. And a cult has a leader who they think is infallible, and they don’t question anything he says. But I don’t go on Colbert or any of the [political] interview shows because that’s not my wheelhouse.

What movie role did you not get that you wish you had?

Milos Forman asked me to read [opposite] actresses [to cast them] for the film version of Amadeus. I said, “Milos, I played Amadeus on Broadway and in the national tour, and I was wondering if there was a chance you’d consider me for the part.” And he laughed. “No-no-no, because no one is to be believing that the Luke Spacewalker is the Mozart!”

You laugh when you tell that story, and I know you love voice work, but that stuff had to bother you — to have Skywalker hanging over you.

No, you’re right. It was disappointing. But everyone has their own trajectory. I had my challenges, and other people have different challenges. I don’t have to be a leading man. I’m happy just to be a working stiff, and that’s what I was for the longest time. All I wanted to do when I started out was make a living doing what I love to do. I didn’t want to be Tom Cruise. And, by those standards, I succeeded far beyond my expectations.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask a few Star Wars questions. Was there a Star Wars scene or line that was actually rehearsed that ended up being cut that you liked?

No, but I can do the reverse. There was a line in the screen test — thank God it was cut, and I’ve never forgotten it. I can do it for you right now. We’re in the Millennium Falcon, no Wookie. It’s just me and Han Solo. He says, when he gets toward the Death Star, “OK, that’s enough for me. We’re turning around. I’ve held up my side of the bargain.” Then I say: “But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilea or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed toward a large-scale assault.” And I thought: “Who talks like this?”

Now, I could break it down for you and diagram it. As a sentence, it makes sense. But to make it sound like it’s an original thought that just occurred to you and deliver it in a spontaneous way is really, really hard. Now, like I say, George Lucas is not an actor’s director in the sense that he doesn’t want to hear about backstory or motivation or all that. He cast actors who are so close to what he wants that he’s not going to have to do a lot of that — Harrison is endlessly laid-back and cool the minute he walks in the room. The only decision I made — that turned out to be the right one — is I’m going to do this as sincerely as I can.

What do you think about the idea that Lucasfilm might continue to make an AI Luke Skywalker in products, with increasing realism, even after you’re gone? Because you can say that you’re done with the character, but it’s a bit like that Breaking Bad line: “We’re done when I say we’re done.”

What you’re asking about is so hard to contemplate. Are we going to have to have something in our wills that comment on that, saying, “I don’t want this done”? I have enough trouble trying to deal with the jobs that I do have than to start speculating about the future. There’s so many questions about AI that haven’t been answered. We’ll see how it plays out.

It should be easier for you to contemplate than it would be for most because there was already the half-measure — apologies, another random Breaking Bad reference — of the de-aged version of Luke in The Mandalorian.

The reason I did Mandalorian was that Luke had a beginning and an end. There was no middle. It was like making a trilogy about James Bond as a young boy who first became aware of the Secret Service and wanted to be a part of it. Part two was him training to be an agent. Part three is earning his license to kill — The End. No From Russia With Love, Dr. No or Goldfinger. You never got to see Luke as a Master Jedi at the peak of his powers. He was the most idealistic character in that series. He was someone who would take adversity and double down and come back and counter his setbacks. We didn’t see any of that. So when I got the chance, I thought, “Geez, this is wonderful.” I think Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, boy, do they get Star Wars. They get it. They’re speaking the same language that George did in a way that I questioned in the sequels.

Does Mark Hamill ever get a day without Star Wars? Obviously this isn’t one. But a day where it doesn’t come up and you never have to think about it?

I can go for long, long periods of time where it never comes up.

I’m told you’re a pretty big collector of comics and other fandom things. What’s your most prized collectible?

Almost all my collection — whether board games or toys or whatever. It started out getting things that I wanted as a kid, but we couldn’t afford. The Lie Detector Game? I wanted that so bad. So I started collecting board games and comic books that, by the way, my father banned in my house. Batman, Superman, even Archie, was frowned upon. Then it occurred to me: I just paid $1,500 for what was originally a 10-cent comic book. It reminds you of your own mortality. So I stopped, and I don’t collect them anymore.

What is the best piece of career advice you ever received?

Believe in yourself. Work hard. Never give up. And it will happen for you. Or kick back, lay low, and you’ll never be disappointed. You have to have a certain confidence in yourself, because when you become an actor, you’re in for a lifetime of rejection. Not because you’re bad, or untalented, but because the odds are that you’re not right for a role. I compare it to spinning a roulette wheel. If you spin that roulette wheel enough times, eventually you’ll hit your number.

This story appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.