Mark Hamill Was Duped By Star Wars Training Regime

click to enlarge

Fri Jul 15, 2016 03:35PM

Mark Hamill believed he had a major role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens due to the intensive training regime he had to undergo.
The star, who played the hero Luke Skywalker in George Lucas´ original Star Wars trilogy, was put on an intensive fitness and diet program before starring in the new installment just to discover he was only needed for a tiny cameo.
"I don´t think they prepared me correctly," he tells Entertainment Weekly. "I went to training, and I lost all this weight. I thought, ´I must be doing something physical if they´re sending me to the gym twice a week and torturing me physically."
Upon receiving the script and realizing fans would learn his character had disappeared in Star Wars´ iconic opening ´crawl´ sequence, the 64-year-old actor read through expecting his character to make a dramatic entrance.
In particular he expected to appear in one scene where new protagonist Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, was engaged in a lightsabre battle in a forest.
"You should have seen me. What are the very first words in the crawl? ´Luke Skywalker has vanished,´" Mark explains, "I said, ´Hoo, this is gonna be good!´
"I´ll tell you where I thought I came in - in the forest, when the lightsaber (wiggles) like this, and flies off," Hamill says. "I thought, ´Oh, what a great entrance!´ GAH! Rey caught it...? She hasn´t even been to Dagobah (a planet in the Star Wars universe) for training! What´s the deal?"
Eventually, after going through the pain of the intensive training regime and losing 50 pounds (23 kilograms), the actor was informed all his hard work was for one brief scene at the end where Luke is revealed to be dwelling on a faraway planet.
He revealed he had been told, "Oh, by the way, all that workout where you lost all the weight? You´re going to have to turn - and remove your hood."
Another star who complained about having to lose a large amount of weight for the film was Princess Leia actress Carrie Fisher, who complained to Britain´s Good Housekeeping magazine, "They don´t want to hire all of me - only about three-quarters."
The follow-up to The Force Awakens, provisionally titled Star Wars: Episode VIII, is due for release next year (17), and Mark believes that its director Rian Johnson is in the process of making a film which will delight fans.
“I was looping Episode VIII yesterday, and there’s dialogue in there, I thought, ‘Oh boy, I can already see this on a t-shirt. Rian Johnson is amazing,” he revealed.