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DAVE ITZKOFF
NYT Syndicate
It was maybe the longest buildup in movie history.
After more than three decades since he was last on screen, years of anticipation and some two hours into Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there was Luke Skywalker, the once youthful hero of this science-fiction saga, revealed as a weathered elder. Standing at a cliff with a solemn look on his face, he was about to receive his lightsabre from Rey, the young heroine, when the story ended and the credits rolled. Luke never said a word.
If this was a bittersweet moment for fans ” an abrupt, tantalising preface to the next Star Wars sequel, The Last Jedi, which opens on December 15 ” imagine how it felt for Mark Hamill.
Since 1977, when the original Star Wars went supernova and started a multibillion-dollar franchise, Hamill has been synonymous with Luke Skywalker, the desert-dwelling tenderfoot who destroys the Death Star, becomes a Jedi knight and reconciles with his villainous father, Darth Vader.
In 2015, The Force Awakens found more substantial screen time for the senior incarnations of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford). But Luke was withheld for maximum anticipation, a decision that Hamill came to accept ” eventually ” as a gift to him and his character.
"It is, if you can be objective about it," he said a few weeks ago, sitting in his home near the Pacific Ocean.
Finding that inner peace took Hamill several months of frustration and self-pity ” not to mention a Lucasfilm-mandated regimen of dieting and exercise, during which he thought to himself:"Why are they training me to turn and remove a hood? I could be the size of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, who's going to know?"
You would understand if Hamill, now 66, had a conflicted relationship with Star Wars, which put him on a pop-cultural pedestal. The series defined and dominated his career, even as he took on other film, television and theatre roles; the franchise went into periods of hibernation, then came roaring back and restored him to relevance when he least expected it.
But Hamill isn't bitter or jaded, and he isn't Luke, though he has retained some of that character's incorruptibility. He's gone from a new hope to an old hand, with a lined, expressive face and a gray beard, beneath which lurks a mischievous sense of humour, a yearning to perform and a joy in sharing Star Wars war stories.
At heart, he is as much of an unapologetic geek as any of his admirers, as astonished by the circumstances that brought Star Wars into his life as he is grateful that he gets to return to its galaxy of long ago and far, far away.
"I'm such a fraud," he said with a theatrical air."But I'm enjoying all the residual attention that the movie's getting. I should be, by all rights, puttering in my garden with a metal detector, telling kids to get off my lawn. What's not to love?"
On this October afternoon, he was at home with his wife, Marilou, and their daughter, Chelsea; the couple also has two sons, Nathan and Griffin. The spacious dwelling is hardly a shrine to Star Wars ” it's mostly decorated with artwork of cherubs and the Beatles, Hamill's own cultural obsession, though you might spot a photo of the 2-year-old Nathan frolicking with Yoda on the set of Return of the Jedi.
Lucas said he chose Hamill from a pool of young actors because he brought a measure of humanity to a film full of space vehicles and special effects."I needed a protagonist who was comfortable treating these things both casually and seriously in order to give that world an air of authenticity," Lucas said. He added that Hamill"brought a boyish enthusiasm and exuberance that really defined the character," and that"made Luke accessible and relatable to people in the first Star Wars" and its sequels.
Hamill committed fully to the material, but was unsure it would find a wider audience."I thought, even if this thing doesn't slay at the box office, it's got midnight cult movie written all over it," he said."Move over, Rocky Horror, Star Wars is here!"
Instead, Star Wars became an international phenomenon, tying Hamill to his character and to Fisher and Ford.
When the critic John Simon wrote in New York magazine that Ford had performed"adequately," Hamill"uninspiredly" and Fisher"wretchedly," Hamill said,"We had T-shirts made: 'adequate, uninspired and wretched.' I said, 'Harrison, adequate's practically a rave compared to what we got.'"
Ford said that during this time,"the three of us were like a very small tribe in the wilderness. We really were figuring this out as we went along." Hamill struck him as"a very bright, sincere young actor," who Ford said"seemed probably the most clear on what he was doing."
Hamill, who receives a percentage of the Star Wars royalties, did not go onto a mainstream career, but he is hardly rueful now. Of his cohort, Hamill said Ford was the one meant for matinee idol status:"He's a brilliant actor ” that's a given," he said."He's also a leading man. When I tested for this thing, I assumed he was the protagonist and I was his annoying sidekick." Hamill believed he'd find his destiny on a different path ” one that was less glamorous, but that fully embraced his affection for the esoteric, the offbeat and the weird.
After two blockbuster sequels, The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983, Hamill believed the Star Wars story was complete. With newfound visibility, he decided to pursue a lifelong dream of performing on Broadway, where he had played John Merrick in The Elephant Man."I wasn't getting character parts in movies and television," he explained."Unless you're Meryl Streep, they don't let you do accents."
He starred in the Broadway production of Amadeus while Return of the Jedi was still in theatres. But his 1985 musical Harrigan 'n Hart, about a pair of 19th-Century variety-theatre stars, was a notorious dud, running less than a week of regular performances.
Over the next 30 years, Hamill was cast in cult films and TV shows, often poking fun at his inability to shed his Star Wars legacy. He played an interstellar fighter pilot in the Wing Commander video games, and on 'The Simpsons', he portrayed himself playing Nathan Detroit as Luke Skywalker in a mediocre dinner-theatre production of Guys and Dolls. Perhaps his best-known work from this era was providing the voice of the malevolent Joker in several animated Batman TV shows, movies and video games.
He was always comfortable being part of the Star Wars subculture, gladly attending conventions and engaging with the people he calls UPFs (for"ultra-passionate fans").
"It's clearly not for everyone ” I get that," Hamill said."But the passion of it all is just astonishing. The way it's become part of the fabric of their lives ” 'I met my wife at this movie, we named our child Leia' ” it's moving."
He was not involved in the much-maligned Star Wars prequels from 1999 to 2005. And when Lucas invited him and Fisher to a lunch in 2012, to tell them he was giving control of Lucasfilm to Kathleen Kennedy and that a new Star Wars trilogy was being planned, Hamill had no expectation of being asked to participate."We figured we had the middle three," he said."It was over."
When Lucas said their characters would be included in these new films if they wanted to play them, Hamill said,"I was completely stunned. Carrie, not a minute went by ” she slapped the table and goes, 'I'm in!' I said, 'Carrie, poker face!'"
Hamill needed more time to think."I was just really scared," he said."I thought, why mess with it? The idea of catching lightning in a bottle twice was ridiculously remote."
He also feared that audiences would reject him and his veteran co-stars, all these years after their Star Wars heyday."No one wants to see the 50-, 60-, 70-year-old versions of us, running around, bumping heads on the Death Star," he said."It's sad."
Hamill thought he would have some cover to refuse The Force Awakens, expecting that Ford would not return.
"He's too old and too rich and too cranky," Hamill said."He's not going to do this." But when Ford said yes, Hamill realised he had to agree, too:"Can you imagine if I was the only one to say no? I'd be the most hated man in nerd-dom."
Soon after accepting, Hamill got to bask in the adulation of Star Wars fans eager to see him on new adventures with the young novices Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega). He trained to get into shape and met with Lucasfilm artists. But deeper behind the scenes, JJ Abrams, the director of The Force Awakens, and his co-writer, Lawrence Kasdan, a writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were realising their ever-expanding script could not accommodate Luke's storyline. (The screenplay was credited to Abrams, Kasdan and Michael Arndt.)
"The idea of it was so enormous," Abrams said."It became clear that there was no way that that movie could also include those chapters. That had to be the next movie."
Eventually Abrams had to tell Hamill that Luke would not be a significant character in The Force Awakens."I let him know before he read the script that his role was minimal," Abrams said."I don't think he knew just how minimal until he read it."
Hamill does not deny his initial disappointment, though he said he was mostly afraid that Luke's big reveal at the end would fall flat."If it smacks the audience as a cheat or a gimmick, if there's a big groan in the house, the egg's on my face, not JJ's," he said.
But Hamill had come to appreciate his extended cameo in The Force Awakens ”"when they talk about you that much in a movie before you even show up, that's fabulous," he said.
But now he and the The Last Jedi creators understand how much is riding on them with this film.
"I told him, everyone is going to be leaning forward for your first words in this," said Rian Johnson, the Last Jedi writer and director."Obviously, Mark came into this one with higher expectations for what we do with the character."
