40 Mark Hamill Moments That Will Make You Fall In Love With Him All Over Again

In 2015 Parks & Recreation star Adam Scott told Jimmy Kimmel that he once asked Hamill to come to his eighth birthday party via a handwritten letter. Two years later, when he was back on Kimmel’s show, Scott finally got to meet Luke Skywalker when Hamill made a surprise appearance. Scott shook with excited delight and exclaimed, “This really is one of the best moments of my life.” Aww.

In 2019 a fan’s mom tweeted a picture of her daughter’s Star Wars sneakers. She wrote that a boy at her daughter’s school told her that the galaxy far, far away was only for boys, not girls. The mom tagged Hamill, asking his opinion, and he replied, “I think Luke and Han are lucky Leia took over their ‘rescue’ on the Death Star or it would’ve been a very short movie.” What a gentleman.

Hamill told Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2016 that he took no offense by his part in The Force Awakens being so minimal. He did wish the studio had told him sooner, though, because they made him hit the gym to get in shape. But in reality, Hamill didn’t need to, as Luke was just wearing a cloak and hood on screen during a small cameo. D’oh.

Are you really a celebrity of any standing if you’ve never had to torpedo an internet rumor about your own death? We’d argue that, no, you’re not. Hamill had to do just this in 2017 when a Sky News parody account tweeted about his demise and people on social media were worried it was true. Hamill quickly replied, “Don’t rush me, already! #StillVeryMuchAmongstTheLivingThankYou.”

This photo’s an example of Hamill having his finger on the pulse of Star Wars fandom. In December 2015, as excitement about The Force Awakens was hitting fever pitch, a third trailer was released. Only it didn’t show Luke Skywalker, who fans knew would be in the movie. Hamill played into the mystery by tweeting this picture of him reading USA Today, with its “Where is Luke?” front page headline. So funny.

On top of affectionately ribbing his Star Wars cast-mates at every opportunity, Hamill’s also great at poking fun at himself. In 2020 a fan posted a picture of his high school yearbook, which revealed Hamill was the president of his student council. Hamill replied, “Mark being a student council nerd with a goofy comb-over is legit the most Mark Hamill thing ever. #MayTheDorkBeWithYou.”

Before The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters in 1980, Hamill was entrusted with the mother of all spoilers. Or, rather, the father of all spoilers. He kept it secret that Darth Vader was to be revealed as Luke’s papa in the film for 18 long months. Hamill claimed that, when Ford first saw the twist at the premiere, he said in astonishment, “Hey kid, you didn’t tell me that!”

In 2016 Hamill tweeted a brilliant “Happy Birthday” message to his The Force Awakens co-star Daisy Ridley. It included a great picture of them recreating the scene where Yoda hangs on Luke’s back in The Empire Strikes Back. Except they were in street clothes outside Pinewood Studios. And Ridley was carrying a grown man in his 60s on her back. Hilarious.

During a speaking engagement with the Cambridge University Union in 2016, Hamill admitted he originally thought Luke Skywalker was supposed to be Han Solo’s sidekick. Speaking about auditioning with Harrison Ford, Hamill said, “clearly he was a leading man [and] he was coolly flying the ship, and I was annoying him.” It was only when he was finally given the script that Hamill discovered he was, in fact, the lead.

Way back in February 1980 Hamill made an appearance on a special Star Wars installment of The Muppet Show. The broadcast had an interesting historical significance for fans, as it featured the debut of Luke Skywalker’s Bespin attire, which he then sported in The Empire Strikes Back. Hamill waxed lyrical about his memories of the show on Twitter, writing, “I felt instantly at home with characters I’d loved for years.”

Sometimes Hamill uses his Twitter account to talk about important issues of the day. Sometimes he uses it to make Star Wars fans happy. And sometimes he uses it to make dad jokes that even the lamest fathers would think twice about. When a fan tweeted him and said it would be an honor if Hamill tweeted him back, Hamill simply responded, “Back.” What a character.

We’ve all been fired from jobs as teenagers or young adults. It’s a rite of passage. And Mark Hamill’s no different. He revealed to James Corden that he was given his marching orders from Jack in the Box when he was a jobbing actor. The problem was that, when he worked the drive-thru window, he did it in-character. Complete with silly voices. He confessed, “I was always trying to find the theatrical aspect of it.”

In a brilliant 2017 video filmed for the Force For Change charity, Hamill pranked some unsuspecting Star Wars fans by surprising them in the middle of re-enacting scenes from the movies. Seeing their eyes light up when he revealed himself was simply wonderful. We’ll just have to forgive the fan who admitted her favorite movie was Rogue One, though. That didn’t even star Hamill!

Hamill seems to love Twitter and is constantly interacting with his fans on the platform. And in 2017 he decided to conduct an experiment. Could he get one of his tweets to go viral, even if it were a boring message with no interesting content at all? Well, 179,000 likes and nearly 14,000 retweets indicated that yes, he could indeed do that.

At Star Wars Celebration Europe in 2016, Hamill told the enraptured crowd how he described Star Wars to his future wife when they began dating. He was making the movie at the time and she asked, “Is that like Star Trek?” Rather than try to explain how this movie would be different, before she’d even seen a frame, he simply replied, “Yeah, it’s exactly like Star Trek.” We’re sure she knows the difference these days.

Hamill revealed a piece of Harrison Ford wisdom delivered on the set of the first Star Wars on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2019. When Hamill expressed concern that Luke’s hair ought to be wet and filthy in scenes set after the characters end up in the trash compactor, Ford schooled him on the tone the film was going for. He said, “Hey kid, it ain’t that kind of movie. If people are looking at your hair, we’re in big trouble.”

A criticism often leveled at George Lucas is that his dialogue in the original Star Wars trilogy was extremely clunky. It reportedly led to Harrison Ford informing the director, “You can type this, George, but you can’t say it.” In this postcard autograph, which featured a picture of Lucas and Hamill on-set, Hamill riffed on Ford’s line with the message, “Yes, George, but just try acting to these scripts!”

The opening of Hamill’s 2017 Hollywood Walk of Fame speech was a characteristic mix of sincere emotion and humor. Taking to the stage after an intro from Ford, he began, “These will be brief remarks because words truly fail me. It’s hard to convey my gratitude, my joy, the exhilaration of being recognized this way.” He then quipped, “I haven’t been this speechless since Force Awakens,” in a nod to his silent cameo at the end of that movie.

The finale of Hamill’s Walk of Fame speech was also a doozy, as it saw the actor reference his two most iconic roles. First off, there was his closing line of, “From Jedi to Joker and back again, it’s been a fantastic ride. Thank you so much and may the Force be with each and every one of you.” But then he belted out the maniacal Joker cackle that fans of Batman: The Animated Series love so much – and everybody left happy.

If Hamill was anything less than the nicest celeb on Earth, he may have had a “Don’t you know who I am?” moment when he visited Disney’s London base in 2016. Happily, though, he saw the funny side of being issued a pass that listed him as “Mark Hamilton.” He tweeted the gaff to all his followers and wrote that it was a “personalized ego deflator.”

On June 30, 2019 Hamill replied to a tweet asking, “Who is the most famous alum of your high school?” with, “Me.” It was typically amusing. But it made us wonder: what other celebs went to his high school? It turns out he attended three schools and one, Annandale High in Virginia, is also the alma matter of Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. How cool is that?

In 2018 a Twitter fan teased Hamill about an embarrassing moment from way, way back in 1980. It was footage of the great man on a variety show, clad in a gold jumpsuit, sitting on a moon, singing – in German. As Hamill tweeted, back then his mind-set had been, “Who cares? No one outside of Germany will ever see this?” But the internet remembers. The internet always remembers.

During his Walk of Fame speech, Hamill reminisced about Harrison Ford giving him a particularly sage piece of advice when they were shooting the first Star Wars film. They had no idea the film would be such a stratospheric success, and the more experienced Ford must have wanted to temper Hamill’s expectations, and potentially rein in any hint of an ego. With a pitch perfect impression, Hamill revealed Ford told him, “Hey kid, don’t get cocky.”

As a star of the most beloved sci-fi franchise in history, Hamill’s undoubtedly signed millions of autographs over the past 40 years. This explains why he likes to keep things interesting for himself, which sometimes leads to him writing amusing messages to his fans. On a postcard entitled “The search for Vader,” Hamill wrote, “This Vader guy is a loser… hope he doesn’t have kids!” Brilliant.

In the lead-up to the release of The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, Hamill admitted to Seth Meyers that he’s always taken delight in trolling Star Wars devotees. “I love to tease the fans online. It drives them crazy,” he laughed. “I’m sure Disney is not too happy about it, but what are they gonna do, fire me? It’s too late.”

Leave it to Hamill to inject some humor into one of the bleakest moments in Star Wars history. On a postcard showing Luke Skywalker’s home burned to cinders, Hamill scribbled, “Darn it! I told Uncle Owen not to smoke in the house!” This is, of course, referencing the scene when Luke finds the remains of his aunt and uncle in the ruins of their Tatooine farm. Pretty dark, Mark. But we dig it.

At the Walk of Fame ceremony, Hamill demonstrated his remarkable spryness when he adopted a Jedi-esque cross-legged pose. With his feet resting perfectly on either thigh, the paparazzi snapped the star, and one even yelled out a compliment. The fact that Luke Skywalker himself was still able to sit like that will have warmed the hearts of Star Wars fans.

No one likes their grammar being corrected on Twitter. Especially not when the corrector is actually wrong. That’s exactly what happened to Hamill in 2018, though, when someone told him he’d mixed up “your” and “you’re” while praising Kelly Marie Tran’s performance in The Last Jedi. Hamill wasn’t having any of it, though, replying, “‘Your’ performance is correct. Not ‘you’re’ (you are) performance.” He then cheekily added, “Thanks for ‘you’re’ attention!”

Hamill made LGBT Star Wars fans ecstatic in 2016 when he told The Sun that he believed Luke Skywalker’s sexuality was in the eye of the beholder. “Fans are writing and ask all these questions, ‘I’m bullied in school. I’m afraid to come out.’ They say to me, ‘Could Luke be gay?’” he explained. “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer. If you think Luke is gay, of course he is.”

On top of being a genuinely awesome talk-show guest who’s chock full of interesting and hilarious anecdotes, Hamill’s also catnip for people like Jimmy Kimmel for another reason. That’s because he’s always game to appear in a ridiculous SNL-style sketch. His most recent one, in which he played an action-movie version of Albert Einstein in Thawing Albert, was prime Hamill silliness. Fans ate it right up, of course.

This particular autograph’s amusing because, for once, it isn’t a funny aside that sprang from Hamill’s head. The line, “You smell something, girl?” is actually a quote from The Empire Strikes Back, but it sounds hilarious now when you imagine Hamill’s wry tone as he wrote it. Because he’s almost certainly repurposed the line as a fart joke. He’s not above such things.

In March 2021 Hamill charmed kids at a California kids’ hospital during a Zoom call. When one of the young fans asked him how The Joker would react to Luke Skywalker, he slipped effortlessly into the Clown Prince of Crime’s voice. He then did a perfect impersonation of Yoda while telling the little boy his thoughts on his new rescue puppy. It was super wholesome.

Hamill told the Star Wars Celebration Europe that his initial perception of George Lucas’ script was, shall we say, less than positive. He joked, “It was funnier than hell. When I read the screen test I was like, ‘Is this like a parody? Is it like a Mel Brooks movie? Who talks like this?” Astoundingly, he claimed that he even asked Lucas if the movie was a Flash Gordon spoof. Oh dear.

When a series of his autographs surfaced on Facebook and imgur in 2015, including this Grease-referencing land-speeder one, Hamill spoke to Buzzfeed. He confirmed that they were real, unlike so many floating around the internet. Hamill also assured fans that he wouldn’t write anything inappropriate on their items. Unless they specifically asked him to. In which case, all bets were off.

Over the years, Hamill’s revealed a predilection for pushing people’s buttons at every opportunity. He did it for years with Carrie Fisher who, upon hearing that Luke was to be revealed as Princess Leia’s brother, didn’t like Hamill’s suggestion that this surely meant Luke was a prince. Hamill wasn’t actually bothered, but when he saw that it irked Fisher, he still brought it up constantly just to tease her.

A nurse named Chloe Ducose had been busy administering coronavirus checks in San Diego at the height of the pandemic when she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live via Zoom. As a thank you, Kimmel arranged for the huge Star Wars fan to be surprised by Hamill, who revealed she would be sent a signed light-saber replica and a $10,000 donation. Ducose, unsurprisingly, wept with joy. It was lovely.

Hamill once revealed himself to be a fan of Wolverhampton Wanderers, the English Premier League soccer team. Or, rather, he liked a tweet asking if he was a fan of “wolves,” thinking the message referenced the animals. It transpired he’d never even heard of the soccer club. But after supporters got in contact with him, he tweeted that he was now a fan for real as they were so nice about the mix-up.

During a 2017 appearance on Good Morning America, Hamill met Star Wars super-fan Robbie Fox. The host of the My Mom’s Basement podcast and writer for Barstool Sports has a tattoo of a light-saber on one his arms. So, naturally, Hamill posed for a photo by holding Fox’s arm to the sky like he was clutching the real prop. Innovative.

Even though he sees the humor in most things, Hamill did once reveal that there’s a Star Wars meme he isn’t a fan of. It sees Luke Skywalker pointing a light-saber handle at his face, while Obi-Wan Kenobi sits beside him looking unimpressed at his idiocy. Hamill tweeted, “This makes me cringe every time I see it. I don’t remember doing this in the movie. I think it’s just an on-set production still.”

If you need a rare item of Star Wars memorabilia, Mark Hamill may just be the man to see. At Star Wars Celebration Europe, he admitted that his contract for the first movie meant that he’d be sent every item of merchandise connected to the movie. “I thought there would be a t-shirt and a poster,” he laughed. “It was like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, stuff just kept coming.”