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Where have you gone, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)?
Sunday, May 16, 1999 By Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Christopher Walken, master of the moody madmen, as Han Solo? George Lucas apparently considered him and Nick Nolte, as well. But the part went to Harrison Ford, who had worked with Lucas on his breakthrough "American Graffiti." He won the part of the rakish space cowboy and a place in movie history.
A look at where he and others from the first "Star Wars" are now:
HARRISONFORD: "Star Wars" meant this self-taught carpenter never had to build cabinets -- for other people -- again. Thanks to his roles as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, the 56-year-old actor has emerged as the most bankable star in movie history.
Except for the rare clunker, his movies earn money and so does he. Ford can command as much as $20 million per picture. This past summer, he treated himself to a Bell Long Ranger helicopter. The actor bought it from the factory and hired Helicopter Aviation Services in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County, to customize it.
He has never sought celebrity, insisting with conviction, "My ambition was to be a working actor." Last seen as a scruffy cargo pilot in "Six Days, Seven Nights," Ford has played everything from a U.S. president to a cop (more than once) to a fugitive doctor on the run.
An Oscar still eludes Ford. He was nominated for "Witness" but lost to William Hurt, who had a flashier role in "Kiss of the Spider Woman." Next up: Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas will be seen in "Random Hearts," a Sydney Pollack film based on the Warren Adler novel. He's an internal affairs cop and she's a congresswoman thrown together when their respective spouses die under puzzling circumstances.
In real life, he is married to screenwriter Melissa Mathison, whose credits include "E.T."
CARRIEFISHER: When Fisher was cast as Princess Leia, she was primarily known for her famous, long-divorced parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. She once told "The Star Wars Insider" that she tried to read her lines with irony, but Lucas wanted her to be "proud and frightening. I was not a damsel in distress; I was a distressing damsel."
The 42-year-old Fisher still occasionally acts, but she's most prized in Hollywood for her writing skills and quick wit. She's a novelist and a script doctor who works uncredited magic on such movies as "The Wedding Singer."
In 1997, she was among the writers for the Academy Awards show. It took three phone messages from Gilbert Cates, who produces the show, before Fisher called him back. "My fear was that he wanted me to do something with Mark Hamill, some sort of horrible 'Star Wars' thing," she says.
Fisher once wrestled with addiction and, in the fall, returned to rehab for problems with prescription drugs. Neither she nor her mother has had much luck with men. Fisher had a brief marriage to singer Paul Simon and broke up with Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd after learning he was having an affair with a man. She and Lourd have a daughter, born in 1993.
MARKHAMILL: Luke Skywalker doing a voice on "The Woody Woodpecker Show"? A supporting voice? Yep. The 47-year-old actor is speaking for Buzz Buzzard on a new Saturday morning show on Fox.
Ford and Fisher both shook off their seminal "Star Wars" roles much easier than Hamill. He once told Lucasfilm Fan Magazine: "Luke Skywalker was larger than life and spectacularly lit in every scene. And I'm not like that. I'm not very tall, and I'm not a bronze, glowing god. When people see those movies, they're seeing Luke, not me."
Hamill, married and a father of three, is not above playing himself -- both as a cartoon on "The Simpsons" and as a guest star on "3rd Rock from the Sun." And he still snags the occasional regular role (town preacher in the '95 remake "Village of the Damned") but mainly does voice work. He was the voice of Cat on "The Powerpuff Girls," The Joker on "The New Batman/Superman Adventures" and the uncredited voice of Merlin in this year's "Wing Commander."
In May 1997, a jacket worn by Hamill in "Star Wars" fetched $20,000 at a Hollywood auction, which was more than twice the price for a John Wayne hat from "The Searchers."
DAVIDPROWSE:In late 1975, George Lucas met with Prowse in London and offered the British actor one of two roles: Chewbacca or Darth Vader. As Prowse recalls on his Web site (www.daveprowse.com or access from www.starwarz.com), the actor turned down Chewbacca because "I was trying to get away from playing creatures and masked roles. ... When he explained Darth was the big villain in the movie, I immediately accepted."
It was only when he went to the costume fitting that he learned Darth was married to the mask. "However, Darth was such a great role that being masked did not bother me." Still to come, however, was the shock of learning Lucas would substitute the voice of James Earl Jones for his own.
Now 63, a grandfather, owner of a London health club and author of two books (one on fitness, another on child safety), he is planning a third book, which will dish about Darth.
Prowse has been performing at sci-fi conventions since 1979. In August 1993, he was in Pittsburgh for the Zombie Jamboree, and two years ago, he and Carmen Elektra were booked for the Pittsburgh Comicon.
Despite having played one of the most famous villains of all time, Prowse remains anonymous throughout much of the world. "It's a wonderful way to live. You can have all the publicity you crave and then turn it off when you want to."
ALECGUINNESS: This distinguished actor has been using the force of the written word, not the screen, of late. His 1995-96 diary was published under the title, "My Name Escapes Me," and he's penned a follow-up, "A Positively Final Appearance: A Journal 1996-98."
In recent years, Guinness battled chronic glaucoma in his left eye and cataracts in his right. A story in London's Mail on Sunday noted that no sooner had Guinness undergone the first of his eye operations than doctors and nurses crowded around his bed, wanting him to scribble "May the Force be with you!" on souvenir scraps of paper.
The 85-year-old London native, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi, refused to attend the royal premiere of the re-release of "Star Wars" in 1997. "The hype over the reissue and the constant demands for interviews from the press, magazines, radio and TV have got me down, and my only refuge is to refuse everything," he said. More recently, he told the Mail: "The dialogue! It's all frightful rubbish! And you do all your acting against a blue screen."
Guinness was that rare "Star Wars" actor: He was nominated for a 1977 Academy Award for best supporting actor (he lost to Jason Robards). He won a Best Actor statuette for "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and was given an honorary Oscar for advancing the art of screen acting.
Since "Return of the Jedi," Guinness has appeared in a dozen TV or theatrical films, including "Passage to India," "Little Dorrit" and "A Handful of Dust." When Lucas was still a teen-ager, Guinness was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his remarkable stage and screen achievements.
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