The Untold Truth Of Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill has been a household name for decades. After landing his breakthrough role as the plucky Luke Skywalker in Star Wars — and the series of sequels that followed in George Lucas' fantasy sci-fi space opera saga after that blockbuster first installment — he soared to instant and enduring worldwide fame. But as Hamill has tried to emphasize over the years, he's much more than the Jedi warrior that made him famous.

With a media career spanning over half a century and a rich personal life full of ups and downs, Hamill is one of the most visible and beloved personalities in the world. It's worth taking a closer look at the man who's constantly conflated with his best-known role and see how he's continually broken the mold while remaining one of the most familiar faces in Hollywood — despite doing much of his acting work behind a microphone. This is the untold truth of Mark Hamill.

Though Luke Skywalker was his breakout role (and arguably also his greatest burden to bear), Hamill had actually been acting since at least 1963, when he took on a small role in the wildly popular soap opera General Hospital. He continued to have brief onscreen roles in TV hits of the day, including The Bill Cosby Show and The Partridge Family. Things went on in this fashion for some time, with Hamill finally landing a few recurring characters on The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Jeannie, and The Texas Wheelers.

So while he wasn't on the fast track to stardom right upon his arrival in Los Angeles, he was certainly putting in the work and building up a substantial portfolio, something he could present to George Lucas to seal his fate for the rest of his life. Luke Skywalker was a lucky break, but Hamill was a hard-working kid, proving that destiny isn't the only factor in achieving stardom.

The success of A New Hope was unprecedented, as it was a very niche genre movie filmed on a tight budget with a cast half populated by puppets or actors in heavy masks and makeup. But the timing for a space epic was right, preceding and predicting the increased popularity of media like Dungeons & Dragons and Tron. Hamill, along with co-stars Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, was skyrocketed into fame.

This was both a boon and a burden for Hamill, who was then in his late 20s and didn't want to continually be typecast as the wide-eyed, naive young hero of destiny. Part of his efforts to combat this seeming inevitability was a move into stage acting. In the early '80s, Hamill started working on Broadway in plays like The Elephant Man and Amadeus. Unfortunately, his success in Amadeus, in which he played the title character, didn't help him land the same role in Milos Forman's film adaptation, with his notoriety as Luke Skywalker reportedly the sole reason for the snub.

Voice acting, and the Joker specifically, have opened up venues for Hamill to play the villain's role, even in his live-action work. His video game roles often tend towards villain territory; Hamill plays the main antagonist, Malefor the Dark Master, in Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, as well as the most devious of the elemental masks, Py-Ro, in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. In the world of comic book media, he's played the Trickster on two episodes of the TV series The Flash and the Hobgoblin in Spider-Man: The Animated Series.

But the cackling-and-rubbing-his-hands-together style of villain is not Hamill's only animation type. He's also known for that most lauded of modern cartoons, Avatar the Last Airbender, with his role as the cruel, abusive Fire Lord Ozai. Always ready to make fun of himself, Hamill also appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, parodying many of his most well-known villain roles for laughs.

Another arena in which Hamill is keeping no secrets is his political beliefs. Though he admits that he was raised by a strict "Nixon Republican" father, Hamill's own leanings are decidedly to the left. He's particularly vocal via social media, where he can reach out to his millions of fans to touch on hot-button issues. Hamill claims that he "came out" as a lifelong Democrat during the 2012 presidential election, when he was vocal in criticizing then-candidate Mitt Romney for being a "snake oil salesman."

Ever since, he has repeatedly pointed out the flaws, inconsistencies, and inhumanities of the Republican agenda. He's been particularly active in this arena since the 2016 election, even reading Donald Trump's tweets in his Joker voice and bestowing him with the supervillain alter ego the Trumpster. Politics are always a touchy subject even in the best of times; in an era during which Americans sometimes seem more ideologically divided than they've been in decades, Hamill's bravery in speaking out — and potentially risking a portion of his fanbase — is commendable.

Hamill has been married to his wife, dental hygienist Marilou York, since 1978, not long after the release of A New Hope. The couple have three children and one grandchild, and seem to have successfully avoided a lot of the typical drama that Hollywood couples tend to fall into. Hamill and York's long, happy marriage is often attributed to York's lack of celebrity. They broke up for a period so Hamill could get the rush of stardom out of his system, but in the end, family and stability won out.

By marrying a non-celebrity, Hamill wasn't competing with all of Hollywood's other leading men, and he married her not for her star power or her paparazzi appeal, but because they had a genuine connection.  No doubt the two have worked very hard at keeping their relationship alive, but it is clear that they still love each other very much, and it is gratifying to see such a healthy marriage flourish even as Hamill has returned to the Hollywood limelight with the final installments of the Star Wars franchise's Skywalker saga.