I found this fascinating
Here are some:
Because the Star Wars films aren’t set in a recognizable era, Hamill says a lot of kids get weirded out when their parents point him out. In their minds these movies were made 2 weeks ago, so Hamill now is in the habit of saying, “Relax, I’m Luke’s grandfather.”
He didn’t want Luke to hurt the Wampa badly
So I was disappointed when I read (the Jedi script). I was like, “Really? A second Death Star? Really? That’s the plot?”
Brian
At a sci-fi or comic book convention: "Okay, I’ll say it just once: “Why so serious?”
For those who don’t know, Hamill was the voice of the Joker on more than one Batman animated series, and many fans consider him to be the best of all possible Jokers.
How come Mark Hamill could not make it after “Starwars”? He was a decent actor, pretty good looking, and popular. Yet he dropped out of sight…although his career (as a voice-over artist) was pretty successful. Why didn’t he have success as an actor?
He wasn’t/isn’t really that good an actor - certainly no better than many thousands of his tier in Hollywood. Adequate; journeyman; grew into the Star Wars role well. But doesn’t really bring much else to the table.
I tend to think of him more as the iconic Joker (cf Conroy as the iconic Batman) than as Luke, any more. His voice acting is definitely of a much higher tier.
Whaddya mean, “didn’t have success as an actor”? He did a fair bit of live theater on Broadway and did quite well at it, AFAICT. He’s been in a bunch of minor movies and TV shows as well as all the voice acting, some directing and producing, and writing comic book series.
In short, Hamill seems to have had a quite successful career overall in the entertainment industry, as well as enjoying life in general: he’s coming up on his 35th wedding anniversary this year, has three kids, AFAIK has never had any substance abuse issues or other typical showbiz maladies, and people seem to like him.
No, he didn’t become a major movie star like his Star Wars costar Harrison Ford, but major stardom is a rare event for actors, even ones who appear in unexpectedly popular movies. Not being a major star != not having success.
Anyway, happy Star Wars weekend to all! May the 4th be with you and May the 6th not take over your galaxy via the power of the Dark Side.
Mark Hamill has been a consistently steady, working film, television and voice actor for the past 35 years. His career in the entertainment industry dwarfs 99+% of most in Hollywood.
On edit, what Kimstu said.
Because most actors don’t have amazing careers. We tend to only see the few actors who do have amazing careers and miss all the ones who have average careers. The only time we notice this is when there’s an actor who has an average career with a single amazing success in it.
Eh, I think its a reasonable question. He was the lead in the most successful film-franchise in history. Its not uncommon for actors to be associated with a big success and then have their careers go down from there, but they almost always manage to turn their previous successes into at least the chance to get a few high profile roles afterwards. If those roles flop, then they’ll disappear, but Hamil doesn’t really seem to have gotten the chance to be in high profile, big budget flops.
After Jedi, he was in almost nothing for six years, and then went directly to direct-to-video and voice-acting work. He skipped straight to the disappearing part. I think there must be some sort of story there.
Harrison Ford is the only original Star Wars actor to really cash in on the movie’s success. That’s not all that unusual. Mark Hamill did maintain a successful career, but nothing comparable to his role as Luke.
:rolleyes: Only if you count having an active Broadway career as “disappearing”; stage acting is what Hamill was doing for most of the 1980’s.
Jeez folks, just because film and TV gigs are the only ones that show up on IMDB doesn’t mean that nothing else exists. Getting some good roles on Broadway and getting decent reviews in them entitles one to the label of “success” all by itself, I think.
Also, since his early successes were partly predicated on his good looks, he pretty much stopped reaching for leading roles after he’d been in a face disfiguring car wreck.
Would be interesting to know what he did for those six years.
But looking at that filmography, HOLY CRAP. Any actor on Earth would be happy to have that career, straight to DVD movies and all.
As as far as the voice work goes, the filmography shows he was doing voice work before Star Wars.
Warwick Davis, sort of?
Billy Dee Williams more or less followed the course I described in my last post. He leveraged Star Wars into a few other big budget movie roles, none of which did well, and so he disappeared. I’m curious why Hamil, who was the lead, didn’t manage (or maybe didn’t want) at least that.
(As to the others: Fischer was up to her eyeballs in drugs, Guiness and Cushing and Jones were already famous and everyone else were more or less puppeteers).
I wonder if the professional damage done after he was let out of his ABC contract prior to the release of Star Wars (he’d initially requested to be let out, was denied, and they ended up having to let him go after his car crash rendered him unavailable for shooting) contributed to him turning to the stage and then to voiceover work, rather than pursuing a more conventional acting career. Which, as others have ably noted, he has certainly excelled at.
He’s the first one to insist the only thing that happened in the wreck was a broken nose, not the facial reconstruction story that continues floating about. Which, considering the (unexplainable) leading-man success of Owen Wilson, isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker.
Any Mark Hamill fan worth his salt should check out Comic Book: The Movie, a direct to DVD movie written, directed by, and starring Hamill. Tom Kenny, (SpongeBob Squarepants), Jess Harnell (Wakko Warner), and Billy West (Phillip J. Fry, Bugs Bunny, and other voice roles), also have prominent parts. It also has cameos from Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, and others too numerous to mention. It was filmed mockumentary style at the San Diego Comic Convention and also contains some nice extras, such as a panel featuring Gary Owens, West, Harnell, Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Jim Cummings, and other familiar voice actors.
What’s wrong with a voice-work career, anyway? He found something he was quite good at, and did quite well with it.
Hamill is one of the best voice actors of all time. Seriously.
His voice work as the Joker is really fantastic.
In the first Family Guy Star Wars spoof, Peter says something like, “and I’m Han Solo, the only one whose career isn’t ruined by this movie.”
Apparently Mark Hamill didn’t take too kindly to the joke and his lawyers had some words with the Family Guy folks.
Anyway, Mark Hamill definitely had a successful career following Star Wars, but it wasn’t a successful career as a film actor. It would definitely be interesting to know what was up with that. Did he not try to land any acting gigs? Did he not care? Did working on Star Wars sour him on the film acting experience? Is he the greatest Joker of all time?
I only know the answer to the last question, and that’s a resounding ‘yes.’