Is Mark Hamill’s life and career really that strange?
Some people think so. I was very surprised to learn where he has been all these years after Star Wars. He’s been right under our noses and we didn’t even know it!
Life sends you opportunities all the time.
Mark Hamill is best known as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. But he starred in various roles before and after that. He may not have made as huge and iconic splash with the other work he’s done, but he definitely has enjoyed a career with lots of variety. For instance, he started acting as part of the cast in the soap opera, General Hospital.
He loves the fact that he was able to avoid being type cast. When you’re typecast, you’re not in control of your destiny. Someone else is always deciding what kind of work they think you can do. In the case of an actor, if people think you’re only good in romantic roles, that’s all anyone ever thinks of you. This totally limits the work you get.
And it limits the type of life you want to have.
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In the past it really was the movie studios who decided if an actor worked or not. I think sometime in the 1990s there emerged actors, a few at first, who decided they were not going to be part of that old shluck. They began to take their own lives and their own careers in their own hands and be as creative as they wanted.
It’s the same in a job. You’re a programmer and that’s what everyone thinks you are.
If you ever want to break out of that, and do something else, you have to show people somehow that you have other talents. I don’t like job descriptions, because they pigeon-hole you. You always have to fit their description, but everyone brings their own talents, skills and attitudes to a job.
Mark Hamill is a guy who took control of his life and career.
He chose what he wanted to do and he went out and did it.
He’s taken his love of acting almost every possible direction. In my research I found out that he did a movie called “Slipstream,” which he did with Bill Paxton, the topic of my blog last week!
Obviously, he still had to go out and audition at times and go through whatever hurdles he had to go through to get selected, but he’s had a varied and very satisfactory career.
And a stable family life with three children, two of whom were born around the same time as my own.
He’s yet another example of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things, just like all my other stories are about.
As an actor, he’s done acting in front of the screen or in front of live audiences on stage. He acts using his voice for characters on action cartoons. He acted in video games. He has a huge list of credits in his resume. He’s all over the place and I had no idea what had happened to him.
He’s played the role of the Joker in various Batman cartoon series. He really liked Heath Ledger’s role as the Joker in the Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Creepy and unforgiving.
Mark Hamill was in a serious car accident between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” He fractured his nose and left cheekbone, and had surgery to correct the injuries.
So he looked a bit different in the third movie. I didn’t know anything about an accident and I also didn’t notice a difference in his looks when I was a teenager watching the third movie of Star Wars. I really enjoyed all of them!
The last I’d heard of him was back in the 1980s and it was also the last time I paid much attention to him, until now.
It was back then, when I heard about the accident and people said that it had changed his looks so drastically that directors were reluctant to cast him in other movies! They said his entire face was ruined and reconstructed. What I heard was that the accident happened sometime after he’d finished making all his Star Wars movies and that was the reason why I never heard about him again.
The accident happened but everything else was a lie!
This goes to show how you have to check out the facts yourself before you believe anything said in the common press.
But as you can see, Mark Hamill is still living his life successfully on his own terms.
And that’s exactly what you must do too. For the sake of your health. For the sake of your sanity. Because what you think about and feel matters. They affect your brain and the rest of your body.
Like Mark Hamill you have to go out and determine and choose what your life is going to look like. Mark Hamill has an incredible body of work that I never knew about! I thought his return to Star Wars was a bit stilted. He seemed wooden in the few minutes he appeared at the end of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” I don’t know if he’s entirely comfortable with revisiting the series, but here he is. I can’t wait to see the next movie!
So, what about you?
Are you pouring your heart and soul into something that has a lot of meaning for you?
Are you ready to make tough decisions and go after what you want?
Success is not easy, not matter how you cut it. But the results are mighty fine. Stop living small. Dream big. Do big. Take a leap of faith. And be your own person all the way!
Dr. Joanny Liu, TCMD, RAc, P.Eng, International #1 Best Selling Author and founder of Extraordinary Sports Medicine, where we help athletes reverse injury, get back in the game they love and improve their quality of life.
P.S. Watch Nathan’s Successful Recovery from Post Concussion Syndrome:
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