Actor Mark Hamill has opened up to the Hollywood Reporter about his career’s recent turning point, expressing surprise at his late-career resurgence.
“I certainly didn’t expect to have this sudden burst of life so late in the game,” he said. “I should be spending time wandering the beaches with a metal detector. I can’t explain why, all of a sudden, I have five features this year.”
Hamill identified his role in the 2023 film The Fall of the House of Usher as the key turning point. He explained that about five years ago, he was considering a shift to only voiceover work due to the challenges of acting on camera as he got older. However, director Mike Flanagan and producer Trevor Macy contacted him for the film.
“I was playing the family lawyer to a really evil family — a soulless, truly evil guy. And I loved it,” Hamill said. “It was minimalist. It was unlike anything I had ever done, and it sort of rekindled my satisfaction of doing things on camera.”
He also spoke about his role in The Life of Chuck, noting that his wife has seen the film six times and calls it his “favorite thing you’ve ever done.”
Reflecting on a key lesson from his career, Hamill advised, “Don’t sweat the smallest stuff.” He elaborated, “The older you get, the less you care—but I don’t mean that you don’t care about the work or your values. It’s the things that you would obsess about before: ‘Why did they write that about me?’ People are going to say what they’re going to say regardless. So focus on the work and less about the image.”
