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"So much of life is what you roll and where you land." It's difficult to imagine Star Wars (1977) having been a success without Mark Hamill. The grounding force of the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker was the country boy, the young farmer who made it real. Where many movie stars become larger than life, Hamill was able to sell the more fantastical aspects of the film for precisely the opposite reason. Sure, the film was packed with robots and space aliens and intergalactic battleships, but here at the heart of the series was a young man you might have gone to school with, someone who reminded us of our friends and of ourselves. Though Hamill has proven himself nothing if not versatile over the years, it is, ironically enough, that relatable humanity and humility that would make him a towering superstar. At the end of the day, he's always been "one of us," the human center of the entire franchise.

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Crowded House

Mark Hamill was born in Oakland, California, September 25, 1951 to US Navy Captain William Thomas Hamill and mother Virginia Suzanne. Hamill's family could be described as conservative, Roman Catholic, and big, with Mark growing up with two brothers and four sisters. Being a military family, the Hamills moved around a lot, and in Mark's early years he would go from California to Virginia to Japan. Along the way Mark picked up a liking for the performing arts, and would study drama in any programs he could find at Hale Junior High, James Madison High and the Nile C. Kinnick High School in Japan, where he joined the Drama Club, graduating in 1969. From there he would major in drama at the Los Angeles City College before making his way to the auditions scene.

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Like most actors, Hamill put in his time playing bit parts on a number of TV shows. He featured in the pilot episode for Eight is Enough (1977-1981), but was replaced by Grant Goodeve when the show went to series. His most notable role around this time would be a recurring part on General Hospital (1963-present). It was a stroke of luck that would lead to Mark Hamill being cast in his iconic role of Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars film. Legend has it that Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund was auditioning for a part in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) when he spotted George Lucas auditioning for Star Wars (1977) across the hall from Coppola's auditions. Englund would pass the time by watching the auditions for awhile. As one actor after another tried out for the part of Luke Skywalker, something clicked in the young actor's mind: The part seems perfect for his friend Mark Hamill. He would immediately urge Hamill to audition for the part, and be cast as the film's lead.

Nobody expected Star Wars to be such a big hit. Hamill has told the story of attending a movie where a trailer played for the film, and after the tagline "Coming soon to a galaxy near you," an audience member got a big laugh out of the crowd by quipping "Yeah and basic cable about a week after that!" The film looked like a hokey B-movie for drive-ins and second-run theaters, and nobody expected it to become the defining cultural event of its era.

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But you already know how that story ends.

"The first time I went to the Oscars was surreal. It wasn't really me walking the red carpet. It was like watching a movie of a Hollywood premiere. You have to have an intellectual distance from it, because it's so atypical from your everyday life."

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Before shooting the second film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Hamill was involved in a serious car accident. While it's hard to see the silver lining of an auto accident, Hamill's cheekbone and nose healed in such a way as to lend his appearance a touch of maturity that would match the character arc of Luke Skywalker over the next two films. The original trilogy would end with Return of the Jedi (1983), and the films would go down as a cornerstone of American science-fiction, launching more spin-offs, toy lines, radio dramas and books than you could count.

"I have failed Star Wars trivia tests. People come up to me at conventions and use terms that I've never heard of."

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The Stage and The Studio

Throughout the rest of the 1980s, Hamill would stay busy, appearing in everything from television series like The Muppet Show (1980) to stage plays like Harrigan 'N Hart (1985). He featured in a stage production of Amadeus, but was ultimately not cast in the film version released in 1984, with a studio executive saying that he didn't want Luke Skywalker in the movie.

It would be inaccurate to say that Mark hit a career slump, but certainly his association with Star Wars made it difficult for the actor to land another high-profile role in film or television. That is, until he landed the job of voicing The Joker on Batman: The Animated Series (1992-95).

Hamill's take on the iconic villain would instantly make him a fan-favorite. Mark Hamill's Joker had a funny habit of speaking to Batman and other onscreen characters in a cartoonish falsetto, then switching to a far less exaggerated baritone to deliver little asides to the camera, suggesting that the clown prince of crime was hamming it up while secretly being in on the joke, knowing just how silly he must seem to the caped crusader.

To this day Hamill continues to voice the Joker, most recently portraying the villain in the video game Lego DC Super-Villains (2018). The part would win Hamill one role after another, particularly as comic book supervillains, voicing The Hobgoblin on Spider-Man (1994-98), Gargoyle in The Incredible Hulk (1996-97), and Spectre for Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008-11). He would take on the role of Chucky, the evil doll, in the horror remake Child's Play (2019).

"One of the things that I love about voiceover is that it's a situation where, because you're not encumbered by being seen, it's liberating. You're able to make broad choices that you would never make if you were on camera."

In 2015, Hamill's appearance in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) reminded audiences of why they used to love the series so much, and he would follow that up with Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), now taking on the Yoda role of trainer to a promising young Jedi, and will reprise the role again in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

Though Hamill has proven surprisingly versatile over the course of his career, it has been hard to separate the actor from the character of Luke Skywalker. But that doesn't bother him as much as you might think it does. "People think being remembered most for one character is a negative thing, but I don't," he says. "I never expected to be remembered for anything!"