Two Words:
California Summer :smack:
He really is. And a great impressionist too, though he’s never done that in any serious capacity.
Edit… Corvette Summer - double :smack:
Saw Mark Hamill as "Wolfie’ in Amadeus on Broadway, and he was great. Even did a bit of physical comedy (leaping from chairs to piano/pratfalls, etc.).
And he was a perfect Trickster in The Flash live-action TV series (but that was kind of playing the Joker…).
Three more Hamill quotes:
When I read the third one [Return of the Jedi] I mostly was upset with the cavalier attitude towards Boba Fett – he had been built up as this monumental bounty hunter and he … just flies away. I thought that was going to be a major revelation, off comes the helmet, oh my God it’s my mother, she’s a double agent working for the good guys, who knows. I mean we had all these nutty sort of ideas. We were just like you – hey George, wouldn’t it be great if …
I’ve been married to a dental hygienist for years and if you think I haven’t heard “Use the Floss” you’d be mistaken.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.
more here:
Apparently this board doesn’t consider Broadway “acting.” But even if Hamill is the reincarnation of Lionel Barrymore, his role in the trilogy didn’t highlight that. The only character with less range (as written) was Nub-Nub. The films aren’t really what you want to put on your résumé as examples of your “craft.”
I attended the 34th World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City in 1976. The publicity machine for an upcoming science fiction movie had been working overtime and the hotel was plastered with material from the film. The one I remember most was smaller-than-life-size cardboard cutouts of some idiotic figure dressed in black with a car grill over his face. Another attempt to make science fiction look as stupid as possible.
Nothing else was going on, and everybody else was there, so I gave up trying to find an alternative and wandered in after it started. No seating was left, so I stood in back leaning against a table alongside a kid in jeans. The kid can only be described as the prettiest male human being I’ve ever seen in my life. Since this is a Mark Hamill thread you’re way ahead of me, but remember no one in America knew who or what a Mark Hamill was in 1976.
Wikipedia makes the car accident sound worse than a broken nose - that doesn’t require seven hours of surgery. I’ve always believed that he couldn’t have looked quite the same. Hollywood handsome is a whole other level than normal handsome. The kid was the male equivalent of a supermodel and then a couple of years later he wasn’t. Nor did he age gracefully. He should be compared to Carrie Fisher, who was incredibly cute as a teenager (some wow photos) but not later in her twenties.
Big thumbs up for Comic Book: The Movie. It’s a hoot.
I think that’s society’s attitude in general. If you’re not perfect in appearance and the center of attention 100% of the time, you’re worthless.
Well, its a lot less lucrative, for one thing. But its not that there’s anything “wrong” with being a voice-actor, its that Hamil at least at one point pretty clearly wanted to be in (live-action) movies, then he managed to land the lead role in the most successful movie trilogy of all time and then…nothing. Plenty of actors don’t do well after starring in a big hit, but they generally at least manage to leverage it into a chance to be in a few more successful movies.
Given the degree to which Star Wars fans have gone over every inch of the backstories of the original cast, I’m really surprised there isn’t a sort of canonical answer to this question.
He’d done at least some voice acting before Star Wars, in Bakshi’s “Wizards”.
No, he landed the lead role in a second-rate sci-fi rip-off. NOBODY expected Star Wars to be the force (heh!) it became.
I’m having a hard time imagining what words the lawyers could have had concerning this.
I just listened to a podcast with him recently and in it he talked about how people underestimated his acting skills and never thought that he could be a character actor. The creators of Batman were surprised when he nailed the audition – he was originally hired to play a one shot character and was able to parlay that into being the Joker. That’s also why he wanted to be the another character on the Simpsons other than himself in the episode “Mayored to the Mob.” He did play the bodyguard academy instructor.
True story: My wife is a dead ringer for princess Leia. I seriously scored.
Really. It was a cheesy throw-back to Buck Rogers serials, with some neat, updated special effects. It was a fun film for the summer, but it wasn’t until Lucas turned the merchandising up to eleven that it became the cultural juggernaut we all know now.
As well as Corey in the Hanna Barbara Jeanie cartoon.
Not really relevant to my point. It was in fact extremely successful. Hamil didn’t seem to leverage that into a role in any other big budget A-list films.
I once heard an interview with Hamill where he said (paraphrasing) that unlike many in the entertainment industry he was prudently invested and had no money issues.
Hamill was fantastic as Todd Wanio in the audiobook of World War Z. World War Z - Wikipedia His sections taken together were perhaps the longest of the audiobook, and Hamill was a stand out even among the top-notch cast. (An aside: However did Max Brooks get both Carl and Rob Reiner? 
) I think that Max Brooks put a lot of experiences of his WW II veteran father into the character of Todd Wanio.
Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks, who performed for years with Carl Reiner, who is the father of Rob Reiner. Family connections, no doubt.