Mark Hamill's most iconic roles (that aren't Luke Skywalker from Star Wars)

After researching this piece, the main takeaway I have for you all is that Mark Hamill works. Say what you will about the man — and, yes, he does get a lot of hate for being in a metric ton of bad movies and TV since playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars — but he is out there pounding the pavement. Earning his keep. Keeping the lights on.

My job here is to discuss Hamill’s most iconic characters who aren’t named Luke Skywalker. There were many ways I was considering going about this one when I first sat down to write it. They all hinge on the way we choose to define the term “iconic.”

There’s the mainstream way, which reserves the word for classic characters that stand the test of time. There’s the cult-hit way, which treats the emblem as a zany invitation to experience something off-kilter that you’ll never see again. And then there’s the “iconic” that means “iconically bad.” The label reserved for the true stinkers. The roles actors like Hamill would rather people forget than bring back to analyze through a critical lens.

I'll be looking at the early roles Hamill used to define the acting style he’d bring to Luke Skywalker — with all that earnest farm boy energy we know and love — in addition to the roles where he took this style and turned it on its head for maximum effect. This bit of performative gymnastics shows Hamill’s range and intelligence; he knew that he could use people's memory of him as Luke to surprise them when he played darker characters.

But before we get into these iconic roles, something needs to be said about all the decidedly non-iconic performances Hamill has given us over the years. Because there’s no doubt that Mark Hamill has been in more bad TV shows and movies than us fans could care to count. It’s worth noting also that it’s not just the products as a whole that are terrible; Hamill’s roles within them leave pretty much everything to be desired. One must look no further than his rendition of the guest character “Divine Rod” Petrie in 2000-2002’s disaster of a TV show Son of the Beach or Hamill’s take on diminutive Ned Irons in 2001's V.I.P. to see what I mean. In roles like these, he’s somehow at once both innocent and creepy, earnest and evil, acting his heart out and phoning it in. There’s a reason you haven’t heard of these shows and Hamill’s parts in them. And if you’d like my two cents, I’d recommend keeping it that way. Rewatching them for this article was the kind of painful experience that makes you reconsider the history of entertainment itself.

That said, if I had only looked for the highest-rated appearances Hamill’s been a part of while researching this piece, I wouldn’t fully be delivering on my “iconic” promise. Many of the movies that aren’t critically panned on Hamill’s IMDb page are lukewarm, like 1999's Walking Across Egypt, a film where Hamill plays a dogcatcher with a dubious southern accent. The experience of watching Walking Across Egypt bears many similarities to the color beige. Completely neutral, and completely unremarkable for its time. Or, if you’d rather have it in IMDb speak, 7.5/10.

That’s not what we’re here for either. We promised you iconic, and we’re going to deliver. Let’s start with the early roles that launched Hamill’s career.

Mark Hamill's early days

Star Wars: A New Hope came out on May 25, 1977, introducing a generation of movie-goers to Luke Skywalker and launching an era of die-hard Star Wars fandom that has only grown in the years since. But how did Hamill work his way up to the part in the first place?

To answer that question, we have to travel back five more years, to 1972 – when Hamill earned his first recurring role on a TV show. And not just any TV show. We’re talking about the most iconic soap opera of the modern era: General Hospital. Yes, five years before Hamill played Luke Skywalker, he was Kent Murray, the child of Nurse Jessie Brewer in the fictional town of Port Charles, New York. Brewer was played by actress Emily McLaughlin, an original cast member on the show since it started in 1963. Though unfortunately no archived footage of Kent Murray exists, we do have this priceless clip of Hamill fondly introducing General Hospital and the impact it has had on countless actors’ careers at the Daytime Soap Awards in 2003.

Other iconic Hamill roles from his early days include key appearances in a pair of made-for-TV movies: Eric (1975) and The City (1977). In Eric, Hamill plays Paul Swensen, the little brother of the story’s star Eric Swensen, who is diagnosed with a terminal illness just as he’s on the precipice of a promising sports career. In the movie’s most notable Hamill scene, we see him begin to refine the earnest quality that would go on to define the way he played Luke Skywalker. In fact, when Paul Swensen throws himself from his brother’s car in angst after hearing about Eric’s illness, you can almost see a young Luke running away from his Uncle Owen at the moisture farm where he grew up on Tatooine.

Meanwhile, in The City, a movie that dropped just four months before Star Wars, we’re given a glimpse of Hamill playing a more conflicted role. He is Eugene Banks, a distraught young man who attempts to murder a famous country singer after he’s identified as Banks’ estranged dad. Though the movie itself is not great, Hamill stands out as a force to be reckoned with in his performance of a young misfit pushed to the edge. In the scenes where he’s clutching his near-talismanic knife, it’s easy to imagine Luke testing out his first lightsaber, even if his eyes are a bit more wildness when he’s embodying Banks.

Man on the Edge

Then Star Wars happened, and Hamill was pretty much exclusively Luke Skywalker for 10 years. Once the Star Wars mania died down, though, Hamill had to find another gig. Most of the roles he was cast in during this era of his career reek of a desire to coast off his newfound fame. Luckily, Hamill didn’t pigeon-hole himself into being a famous space wizard forever, and that gave us his next most iconic role: that of Danny Carlyle in "Man On The Edge," an episode in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series on the USA Network that ran in 1987. In this role, we see Hamill turn that earnest Luke Skywalker energy I was talking about earlier on its head.

For most of the episode — which runs about 20 minutes from start to finish — Hamill’s character is known as Steve, a grieving young husband who is threatening to throw himself off a building after the death of his wife. Steve’s predicament gets the attention of the police, who send their most accomplished psychologist to try to talk him down. However, at the end we learn that Steve, who is actually a man named Danny Carlyle, was attempting to lure the psychologist up to the ledge the whole time. Hamill’s character proceeds to throw the psychologist off the building for killing his wife, and the scene fades to black. All those sweet farm boy vibes that were built up in audiences’ heads make Steve seem like the victim throughout the whole episode. That is, until we see his killer side come out, turning Steve into the cold-blooded Danny, a man out for revenge.

"Man on the Edge" allowed Hamill to show his range and prove that he could still play unhinged characters like Eugene Banks from his pre-Star Wars days, even after gaining renown as the lawfully good Luke Skywalker. This villainous turn set the stage for what would become the most iconic role of the latter half of his life.

The voice behind the world’s most famous villain

I’ll tell you something I bet you didn’t know: Mark Hamill voices nearly every animated version of The Joker you’ve heard since 1992. It’s his best yet most hidden role, especially for those of us who are used to seeing him only in a live-action context. From Batman: The Animated Series (1992) to Rocksteady’s Arkhamverse video games (2009, 2011, 2015) all the way up through Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three (2024) and the Super Smash Bros-like Multiversus Joker DLC (2024), Hamill has been crushing it as the Joker for decades, obliterating any claim that he’s nothing but a one-hit Force-sensitive wonder.

Hamill brings a joyfyl, spine-tingling element to the Clown Prince of Crime that the character needs to be his best. Hamill is known to fans as the archetypal voice for the Joker, right there alongside Heath Ledger, who is widely considered to be the villain’s most iconic live-action actor. The chilling laugh, the off-the-wall scheming, the tone that makes audiences everywhere smile nervous, knowing smiles. It’s all Hamill, and it has been for over 30 years.

This raises the question of whether Hamill’s voice work as the Joker might be even more important for his legacy than Luke Skywalker. While there’s no doubt he’ll always be better-known for Star Wars, something about the verve with which he’s attacked the role of the Joker over the years shows me he has a passion for the role that keeps him coming back, and keeps audiences lined up for his next outing.

The next time you see the Joker come to life in animation, it may well be Hamill there behind the curtain, crushing it again and enjoying every moment.

Jim the Vampire

If you’re someone who feels deprived of Hamill’s on-screen presence after his shift to working primarily as a voice actor since the early 2000s, then boy have I got a treat for you. The most recent of what I’ve found to be Hamill’s most iconic roles, a character in a cult hit show created by one of my favorite comedians: Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Concords fame. Yes, folks, I’m talking about What We Do in the Shadows.

Hamill’s performance as Jim the Vampire in the 2020 episode "On the Run" brings Hamill's iconic legacy full circle. It reinforces everything I love about Hamill while leaving behind all the terrible TV he’s done in his life once and for all. Jim the Vampire is aware of Hamill’s past. He’s giving it his all. His performance is over-the-top, kitschy and downright hilarious. Hamill’s role is limited to just one episode, but I’m hoping he’ll come back at some point. It’s all I could ever want a 73-year-old Mark Hamill to be and more.

Bonus: The Commercials

If you want a few more looks at Mark Hamill throughout his career but don’t feel like pulling out your VCR or surfing YouTube, just have a look at his appearances in commercials over the years. They’ve got him in all his modes. Earnest young man in a Kodak commercial. Weird, overly-serious middle-aged Jedi in a grocery store. He's even doing the comedy thing for Uber Eats in a gem of a series of funny spots alongside Star Trek’s Sir Patrick Stewart.

Thank you, Mark Hamill. For all you’ve done for the world of weird, terrible, delightful on-screen antics, we salute you!

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