How Donald Duck influenced Mark’s professional career
Every Star Wars fan knows who Mark Hamill is and what he has done for the franchise. It’s been over 40 years since he became Luke Skywalker, saved the princess and restored the Jedi Order. StarWars.com published an interview with him, detailing some of his earliest memories of becoming and actor and how that happened.
As a kid Hamill loved the comic strips that were in the newspapers, they made him want to read more, he says. His childhood favorite movie was the classic black and white version of King Kong. What really switched the light bulb in his head, though, was when he thought about the voice over actors behind the funny cartoons.
It was Donald Duck himself, by the looks of it, who started all of this…
Then, when I was like five or six, I saw Clarence Nash doing Donald Duck. I had never thought about the human actors behind the voices of cartoon characters. A light bulb went off in my head. As I said when I accepted the Disney award, Walt Disney was one of the few studios that would draw back the curtain of secrecy and show you how movies were made. Now, I was a mad movie fan.
Usually the path of an actor is from the stage to the big screen and maybe even TV presence. For Hamill things were the opposite way around – he had never done Broadway before he had done Star Wars.
There are very little details about The Last Jedi in his interview for StarWars.com, because, of course, he is not allowed to speak of the movie yet. He shared how he felt during the filming and about his relationship with director Rian Johnson:
On something like The Last Jedi, it’s such a massive production. The complexity of it is just mind-boggling to me, and how [director] Rian Johnson stays so even-tempered and amiable. I never saw him lose his temper, I never heard him curse or humiliate someone. You know, I’ve had directors that dress people down in front of the whole crew. I was so lucky to be able to have his guidance. Everyone says, “Oh, it must be so fun coming back to Star Wars.” Yeah, it’s fun but it’s also hugely intimidating and bordering on terrifying, because it’s just almost too high profile for comfort
You should check out the full interview.
