Mark Hamill's Biography
His youth
- Mark Richard Hamill was born September 25, 1951 in Oakland, California as the son of a naval officer. He is the middle child of seven. Due to his father's postings the family changed their home town a number of times. Mark lived in New York, California, Virginia and even in Japan.
His early career
- After his graduation in Japan the family returned to California, where Mark entered Los Angeles City College, majoring in drama and theatre arts. While still a student he made his professional debut in 1970 in an episode of "The Bill Cosby Show." His career followed a steady path: he appeared in a number of TV-series like "Streets of San Francisco" and TV movies like "Sara T." and "In Circumstantial Evidence." He also was a regular on the daytime soap opera "General Hospital" and the short lived comedy series "The Texas Wheelers."
Star Wars
His real movie debut came in 1977 when George Lucas cast him for the role of Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars" and its sequels "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." This transformed his career from a modestly successful TV actor to a Hollywood movie star with international fame. He reprised his famous role as Luke for NPR in the radio drama series of "Star Wars: A New Hope" and "The Empire Strikes Back.", and as a guest star in the Muppet Show. |
Private life
In December of 1978 Mark married Marilou York in Malibu,
California. In June of 1979 their first son Nathan Elias was born
in England, where the couple was staying during the shooting of
"Empire Strikes Back" at "Elstree" Studios. Nathan was followed by
Griffin Tobias in 1983 and Chelsea Elizabeth in 1988.
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Theatrical career
After "Return of the Jedi" Mark left Hollywood to
avoid being typecast forever as a Flash-Gordon-like space hero.
He went to New York to develop his theatrical career on stage. On
Broadway he starred in plays like "Amadeus" and
"The Elephant Man." He also sang and danced in the role
of Tony Hart in "Harrigan & Hart" for which he
earned a Drama Desk nomination for "Best Actor in a
Musical."
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As a voice-over actor
Returning to Hollywood after the musical closed, Mark
Hamill found out the meaning of: "out of sight, out of
mind," but he made an extreme good come back as a voice-over
talent in "Batman: The Animated Series" in which he did
the voice of The Joker. He also did the Hobgoblin in
"Spider-Man." Earlier in his career, Mark had already
worked as a voice-over actor in "Wizards" from Ralph
Bakhsi. Nowadays he is known as one of the most versatile voice
talents in Los Angeles.
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Guest roles
Along with working as a voice-over actor, Mark Hamill had a
lot of guest appearances in TV-series. In 1986 he played Jonathan
Quick in one of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories."
In the sci-fi series "Outer Limits" he appeared in the
episode "Mind over Matter," and as Tobias LeConte he
was seen in several episodes of "Sea Quest DSV." Not
only as an actor Mark Hamill gathers fame; he hosts and narrates
several informative series, like ".com" for CNBC and
"Hunt for Amazing Treasures" on The Learning Channel.
A feature length documentary Mark narrates and hosts is
"Hollywood Aliens & Monster" a walkthrough the filmhistory's
use of monsters, aliens and robots.
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Movie career after Star Wars
But his movie career got an uplift too. He'd had a chance
to play a lot of different characters in "Slipstream,"
as the policeman Will Tasker; in "Black Magic Woman,"
as the sexy gallery owner Brad Travis; in "Midnight Ride,"
as a psychopatic killer Justin McCay; in "Picture Perfect"
as the romantic photographer Josha Payton; in "Earth Angel"
as the student and the teacher Wayne Stein and in "
Time Runner" as Michael Raynor.
In "Hamilton", which premiered in Sweden in 1998 he performed as the unscrupulous spy Mike Hawkins, who has a commercial interest in a nuclear bomb. In several interviews Mark has admitted, that in fact he loves it to play a villain and be the bad guy. |
CD-rom games
Mark Hamill also shows his broad interest in new technology
by picking up the role of Christopher Blair in the CD-ROM games
Wing Commander III "Heart of the Tiger," Wing Commander
IV "The Price of Freedom" and Wing Commander V
"Prophecy."
In the animated series he also is the voice of Colonel Christopher Blair. He also did a voice-over in the CD-rom game Gabriël Knight: The Sin of the Father. He was the regular host for the DOT.com TV-series. |
"The Black Pearl"
His greatest wish is to direct the movie "Black
Pearl," for which he, together with his cousin Eric Johnson,
wrote the story. The story has been released by Dark Horse Comics
as a 5 issue comic book and was re-released in 1998 as a trade
paper back.
Mark has done a the CD-rom version of his story, which came out in the fall of 2000. |
Star Wars Special Edition 1997
The release of "Star Wars: Special Edition"
brought Mark Hamill back to the screen as Luke Skywalker. He and
his family attended several premieres. In one of his interviews,
Mark said that seeing the movie again after 20 years gave him a
lot pleasure. He is proud to be Luke Skywalker, one of the many
characters, he has played and for a lot of his fans he is Luke
Skywalker and he always will be.
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This biography has been compiled from
several resources. If anything isn't right please
e-mail me.
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