Mark Hamill Thought He was Han Solo's Sidekick When Cast in Star Wars
When Mark Hamill had his first actual audition for Star Wars, it was in a room with Harrison Ford, [...]
When Mark Hamill had his first actual audition for Star Wars, it was in a room with Harrison Ford, doing a scene on the Millennium Falcon. Hamill enthusiastically started asking Ford questions about how to play the scene, how to set things up, things like that.
"He was like, 'Kid, would you just do the lines so we can all get out of here?'" Hamill said of Ford's stoic reaction during a Cambridge Union stage interview. "I'm all bouncing around the walls - we were pretty much in character."
When he got the call from his agent that he'd been cast as Luke Starkiller, one of the first things he asked was who else was in the movie.
"She said, 'Well, I know Harrison Ford,' and I said, 'Oh yeah! I play his sidekick!'" Hamill said. He explained, "clearly, he was this leading man, and I was this annoying kid! And in that seven pages, I thought, well when he drops me off that's the last time you'll see me in the movie."
Of course, that all changed when he got the full script, and saw the original - and unwieldy - full title.
"I get the script, and I open the page and it says, 'The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga #1, The Star Wars.' I went, wait a second, I don't think Harrison's playing Luke Starkiller, I think that's me!"
He said that when he then sat and read the script, even without the John Williams score and editing and effects, "so much of that magic was on that page." He said he "could not believe [his] eyes," and that continued as he started filming.
