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Features
Los Angeles Collegian — Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Mark Hamill
Shares‘StarIntimate Look at Life, Career Wars’ legend looks back at college years in exclusive interview with Los Angeles City College Collegian. He talks life, education, the craft of acting, and voiceover and how what he learned at City College helped his star rise in Hollywood. Read the full interview at Rebecca Klinesmith’s blog at: http://beccasuzannek.tumblr.com/
Andre Medina/Collegian
Mark Hamill is interviewed by the moderator, Dr. Alfred Rossi, at the Q&A with students and the public at the Camino Theatre on Dec 6. The event proceeds will support the LACC Theatre Academy.
Andre Medina/Collegian
Tomas Rodriguez/Collegian
Mark Hamill is interviewed by the moderator, Dr. Alfred Rossi, at the Q&A with students and the public at the Camino Theatre on Dec 6. The event proceeds will support the LACC Theatre Academy.
By Rebecca Klinesmith After attending his brother’s wedding in Los Angeles, Mark Hamill came across Los Angeles City College and it was there he decided to enroll in Theatre Arts after graduating high school in Japan. Hamill was born on Sept. 28 1951 in Oakland, CA and is one of seven children. Mark lived in a variety of different places from Virginia to Japan because of his father being in the Navy. Mark’s professional acting debut was in 1970 on the “The Bill Cosby show,” and following that, he had success on variety of TV shows until he auditioned and landed the role of Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.” Star Wars then catapulted Mark into instant stardom. Mark is a man with many talents, having much success on TV, movies, writing, directing, and voice-over, having over 300 credits to his name. He is best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, and as the voice of the Joker in the Batman animated series. Collegian: What inspires you? Hamill: Talent. There’s so much talent around whether it’s music or theatre, and all the performing arts. It never ceases to amaze me, and I always wanted to be a character actor which is why I’m so grateful to have a career in voice-over because that’s where you get to play character parts and use accents that you never ordinarily get to use if you’re on camera. You also get to play characters. I never would’ve gotten cast as the Joker if it was a live action film. It’s so nice to get to play character parts in that realm, and I’m astonished at the talent of these people. I do maybe
[a] half dozen, maybe a dozen voices. There’s people that get to do 40, or 50, or 100, I mean it’s just staggering, and it seems to me wherever I go whether it’s in television, or off Broadway, or Broadway, movies you’re constantly amazed at how talented those people are. Collegian: You majored in Drama at Los Angeles City College. What was your experience like? Hamill: When I came to Los Angeles, I came for my brother’s wedding, I had planned to go to New York, and be a New York actor, but at the wedding I met a guy who had written an original musical comedy that he was doing at the then Horseshoe Theatre, now the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose Avenue. I auditioned and got the part. I was 17 years old, and the brother of the composer’s wife went to LACC. He drove me [to LACC]. I was not a bad student. I flirted around the edges of the honor roll and my only drawbacks would be Chemistry or the one subject that would keep me out of contention. I just didn’t have the money to go to a name school like Juilliard, Carnegie Mellon, or Yale School of Drama. Even locally, UCLA or USC certainly have the cache’ in terms of a name school but I had no money. Now the irony of course is that LACC then becomes the destination education for people that have no money but who are extraordinarily talented enough to compete with anybody in any of the schools that I just mentioned. The alumnus is second to none and we’re all proud of that. I learned things at school that I use throughout my career. Getting into LACC was a godsend. It was just wonderful and over the years I’ve tried to give back to the school as
much as I can. I’ve been back to speak to students before and I look forward to it on Sunday. Collegian: You said something about voice-over actors, I know that you have an extensive resume with voice-overs, and I know you did the Joker, and that’s amazing what you do, and I want to know what’s your process of getting into character for that? Hamill: Well for any character, not just for the Joker, you read the script. It’s only as good as the printed words. You realize what the story is about, what your role is, and then you just let it all soak in. You read it over and over again. I was always enamored at voices growing up as a kid when I would see “The Invisible Man,” and Boris Karloff as “Frankenstein.” I loved the old black and white Universal horror pictures when I was a kid and I just couldn’t believe it. I was always into the musicality of the spoken language. I loved cartoons. [Hearing] Disney actor Clarence Nash do Donald Duck would blow my fiveyear-old mind because I loved Donald Duck. Collegian: Where do you see yourself five years from now? Hamill: Oh, I try and never do that, it’s always scary. I remember sitting and doodling in my notebook when I heard about the movie "2001." This would have been 1967-1968 when I was, you know a teenager and I said ooh, this is cool. There’s this movie coming out called "2001" [ A Space Odyssey ] by Stanley Kubrick, and while I was doodling around, I thought I wonder how old I’ll be in 2001, so I did the math and when I discovered, and that would have been when I was 15, or 16, it was 50 years old,
Mark Hamill speaks to students about how LACC has had an impact on his acting career. Despite being famously known for his role in “Star Wars” as Luke Skywalker, Hamill has appeared in many TV shows and had been the voice for many cartoon characters throughout his career.
and I just was, it was like a thunderbolt hit me. I could not imagine myself at that age, that ancient age of 50 to a 15 year old, so I’d never done that. So if you add your age, to you know, I mean when you finally reach that age at 50, you go oh, that’s not so bad. I mean it’s not the way I’d imagined it back when I was a kid, ‘cause I was basing it on other 50 year olds, like my dad. Yeah, he’s no fun. He doesn’t like the Three Stooges, or the Rolling Stones, or bubble gum. You know, he’s no fun, and I thought when do I turn into my dad. Well, so far, I haven’t, and I still like those things, and I hope I never lose the enthusiasm I have for them. That’s why I’m so lucky. I really want to say do what makes you happy. Collegian: You directed Comic Book: The Movie. Do you see yourself directing any more movies? Hamill: I would love to. In fact, I was working to get the movie version of a comic book I wrote called “The Black Pearl” made. But it’s incredibly difficult and quite frankly we couldn’t get financing. It doesn’t mean that I’m giving up. I would love to do it because I want to not just compose the music, but perform the music as well. We will see what happens. I love actors, movies and I understand the problems of movie and TV actors so it seems like a natural way to go. If the opportunity presented itself, I would love to do it again someday. Collegian: What advice would you give to students at LACC? Hamill: The world is yours if you apply yourself. In other words you will get out
of LACC as much as you put into it. It’s a reciprocal endeavor. You can be very passive and just go through the motions and get the numbers so you pass. We all do it and I’ve done it many times in subjects that don’t really fire my interest and [students] really can embrace what’s available to you and really get behind it. It’s something I think will serve [students] well in the professional world. Another thing I thought was a drawback was that they prepare you for theatre but they don’t really prepare you for the professional world. I had some opportunities because I got an agent. It was the summer of 1969. By the summer of 1970 I was on the Bill Cosby Show, I got jobs on television. Then I got something that was right smack in the middle of the school year, and rather than going to the department and saying if you could let me out for five days , I will do x-y-z to make up for it. That’s just the way it was, and then I went away to do an episode of “The Partridge Family.” I had to lie. I had to go to the head of the department and base a complete lie. It was based on reality, but in essence, I said I had to go take care of a sick mother in San Diego. I was living in a house with other students from the department and if it had leaked that I had done this, I’d be kicked out of the department and I would have been drafted. So it was high stakes. I couldn’t even let the people in my house know the truth. I had to pack my bags, I didn’t even have a car. I’d have to pretend to hitchhike to San Diego, when in fact I’d hitchhiked to the Valley and got a motel room very close to the Columbia Ranch where it was being filmed. I came back five days later and I did make up [the] work. If you’re serious about it, then one of the things that is most important is tenacity.