Mark Hamill has been having the most eventful years in his life. At 73, he has been having a career resurgence, years after becoming famous as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars film franchise. And he had no idea he would be so sought-after at this stage of his career.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said, "I certainly didn’t expect to have this sudden burst of life so late in the game. 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."
After a notable role in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, created by Mike Flanagan in 2023, things took a dramatic turn. "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," he revealed.
"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," he added.
Then came along Tom Hiddleston's The Life of Chuck, another Mike Flanagan feature. Following that, he played a villanous leader in the dystopian film The Long Walk, a Stephen King adaptation.
"I’ve seen Life of Chuck now three times. My wife has seen it like six times. She says, 'It’s my favourite thing you’ve ever done'," he said.
But Hamill had his inhibitions on making a comeback to cinema and wanted to give way to a new generation of actors. He said, "You can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice — they should really focus on a new generation of characters. And I thought, 'Well, Harrison [Ford] is not going to do it anyway."
While Hamill has enjoyed huge success in Hollywood, he acknowledges that mistakes were also a part of the journey. "Don’t sweat the smallest stuff," he said, talking about the lesson he wished he learnt early in his career.
"The older you get, the less you care — but I don’t mean that you don’t care about the work or your values. It’s the things that you would obsess about before: 'Why did they write that about me?' People are going to say what they’re going to say regardless. So focus on the work and less about the image," he added.
