Mark Hamill is not interested in Marvel movies. Speaking to GamesRadar+ on his press tour for “The Long Walk,” the 73-year-old “Star Wars” icon said he’s at a point in his career where he’s only interested in acting roles he “wouldn’t have imagined” taking. That means Hamill is not likely to be back in hero mode a la Luke Skywalker anytime soon.
“The older you get, the less you care,” Hamill said about his acting career. “I said to my agent, I’ll keep doing voiceover, but I just don’t relish the idea of going off on location and leaving my family. Because [with] voiceover, they’re four-hour sessions. You might have two on one day, but then you go home to your wife and your dogs, and you sleep in your own bed. All I was saying is I’m at a point where I don’t have the fire in my belly anymore.”
“I’m not on the phone to my agent saying, ‘I gotta be in a Marvel movie.’ I don’t care,” Hamill continued, noting that he found himself in a string of movies recently almost by accident.
“They offered me ‘The Wild Robot,’ and I love animation. That’s in my wheelhouse,” Hamill said. “That, I got to sleep in my own bed. Same with ‘The King of Kings,’ which came out in Easter. But then, ‘Life of Chuck,’ I’d worked with Mike [Flanagan] on ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’ And I was assuming between Mike’s reputation and Stephen King, this is gonna be the all-time supernatural horror epic of all time, and I couldn’t believe how atypical it was for both of them. And unlike anything I’ve ever done or been a part of, I said, ‘Oh, I definitely have to do this.’ That’s no biggie.”
He signed on to “The Long Walk” because of the role of The Major was the polar opposite of the heroic protagonist. The movie also shot in Canada, which is “such a beautiful country. And in a way, it works because you’re isolated. You’re away from home. You’re really much more committed to the material at hand because you’re not dealing with your books and your toys and your TV set and all this stuff you have at home.”
Hamill revealed at Comic-Con over the summer that he was considering retiring from acting in 2019 after completing his final outing as Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
“I thought this stage in my career, I’d be spending more time with a metal detector, wandering around the beach, playing with the dogs in the backyard,” Hamill said. “I said to my agent, ‘You know what? I’m not motivated anymore. I think I’m gonna just sort of retire and just do voice over.’ And the only people that rejected were my agent and my wife, because, you know, it’s good to have me out of the house.”
“The Long Walk” opens in theaters Sept. 12 from Lionsgate.
