His nose was shorter and his expression was harder. The results left noticeable scars on his face. When a nurse put a mirror in front of his face, “I just felt that my career was over.” He had broken his cheek and doctors had used cartilage from his ear to repair his shattered nose. The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital room. I was going about 65-70 mph … I was speeding, going too fast … and what happened, I think, was that I tried to negotiate an off-ramp and lost control, tumbled over, and went off the road,” he told Gossip Magazine. I was way out in the sticks somewhere and there were no cars and no traffic, thank God. “What happened was that I was on the wrong freeway. He realized he was about to miss his exit while driving his BMW through Los Angeles, and to fix it, he tried to cross all four lanes of the freeway. On the night of January 11, 1977, four months before the premiere, he nearly kissed goodbye to his career and even his life. The young director had just had a big hit with the generational comedy American Graffiti (1973) and he was intrigued by the modern, naïve look of Mark Hamill, whom he felt could “bring humanity to a film full of of space vehicles and special effects.” The show Eight is Enough premiered successfully and remained on screen for four years, but without Hamill: the role of Luke Skywalker was his. Shortly before turning 25, while he was waiting for CBS to greenlight his new pilot program ( Eight is Enough), Hamill participated –like half of the young actors in Hollywood at that time– in the auditions for Star Wars, the 1977 space opera by George Lucas. Lynn Goldsmith (Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) After making his debut at the age of 12 on the popular American soap opera General Hospital, he had roles in many of the most successful TV shows of the time, such as The Bill Cosby Show. He is the fourth of seven children from a middle-class family whose members had spent half their lives following their father, a captain in the US Navy, around the world. Or that he heads the cast of The Fall of the House of Usher, the new series that Mike Flanagan is shooting for Netflix, due to be released this year.īy the time he began shooting the galactic saga, Hamill had already been in front of the cameras for more than a decade. That’s true even if we are aware that he lends his voice to one of the characters in the animated movie Go Fish, which premieres this month. If it is to achieve a lifelong position in the collective imagination, star in box office blockbusters, earn millions (he received around $3 million for appearing for 70 seconds in Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and enjoying the unconditional love of hundreds of thousands of fans across generations, it’s clear that Mark Hamill is a star with a successful career.īut analyzing some of his decisions and seeing the success and recognition achieved by Carrie Fisher and, especially, by Harrison Ford, it’s inevitable to feel that if Hamill is not perceived as a true star by the public, it was by choice. Salyers’s answer makes us wonder what it really is to be a star and what can be considered a successful career. Any actor would be extremely lucky to have Mark’s career.” The fact that he didn’t become Bruce Willis or Tom Hanks should in no way be construed as a lack of success. He is very down-to-earth also, kind, intelligent and articulate. He has a nice home in Malibu and a lovely family. He is exceptionally talented and has had a long, esteemed career, playing all kinds of roles in all types of media. “I work with Mark on the Cartoon Network.Mark is a very successful actor. The answer came through someone who knew Hamill well, the actor William Salyers. “Why did Star Wars not make Mark Hamill a huge star? Why did he do so little movie work in the ‘80s and ‘90s?” asked a user on the question-and-answer social network Quora a few years ago.
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