Mark Hamill

Try as he might to avoid typecasting, Mark Hamill will always be remembered as Luke Skywalker, the boyish hero of George Lucas's Star Wars trilogy. Born Sept. 5, 1951, in Concord, Calif., Hamill was already a veteran of television when he made his big-screen splash with Star Wars in 1977.

Likable heroes soon became his stock in trade, and Hamill found it hard to escape being cast as such in movie after movie, including Corvette Summer (1978) and The Big Red One (1980). During the '80s, Hamill spent most of his time onstage, appearing in such Broadway productions as "The Elephant Man" and "Amadeus."

During the '90s, Hamill discovered that the best way to get cast against type was to not appear at all. Since then, he's lent his voice to all kinds of roles, from the Joker in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) to the infamous Flash villain Trickster in an animated TV series.

Filmography