Mark Hamill is making a thrilling transition into villainous roles, as he embraces darker characters and expands his impressive acting repertoire in exciting new projects.
“I certainly didn’t expect to have this sudden burst of life so late in the game,” said Mark Hamill, star of Star Wars, in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter. 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 actor noted, “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.”
The erstwhile Luke Skywalker has been mostly a voice actor for nearly 30 years now—and he’s been enjoying a spate of delicious villain roles lately. Along with the previously mentioned Usher, the actor also portrayed Skeletor in Netflix’s recent Masters of the Universe series, King Herod in Charles Dickens’ surreal account of Biblical events, The King of Kings, and an irascible bear named Thorn in the Oscar-nominated The Wild Robot. Hamill will even be providing the voice of the renowned Flying Dutchman in the new SpongeBob SquarePants film later this year.
But the Emmy winner is finally starting to get the most steady live-action role (not as himself) he has had since the 1980s. In addition to reprising his Corvette Summer role as Kenneth W. Dantley, Jr. in a Green Day music video and receiving praise for his portrayal of an alcoholic grandfather in The Life of Chuck, the actor is now scheduled to play the child-killing “Major” in the eagerly anticipated Stephen King film adaptation of The Long Walk, which opens in theatres tomorrow.
Hamill’s 2017 return as the older, angrier, and much more tired Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi is the reason why his star is now soaring after so many years as a (jocular, at least…) Hollywood punchline. Ironically, the role revitalized his career after disagreeing with director Rian Johnson about his portrayal. That’s why this film ranks among the very best in our complete Star Wars movies ranking.
Despite having voiced cartoon characters since the 1970s, Hamill’s most well-known role is the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series. “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,” he recounted. “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.”
THR praises Mark Hamill for overcoming “pigeonhole” roles in Star Wars. However, now younger filmmakers associate him with villain roles, which may define Hamill’s career beyond his iconic portrayal as Luke Skywalker. The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
The Long Walk is in theaters September 12.
What do you think of Mark Hamill’s transformation to a villain? Let us know in the comments below!
