Mark Hamill, the 73-year-old Star Wars actor who swung a lightsaber as Luke Skywalker, seriously considered leaving the United States after Donald Trump won re-election in 2024. He gave his wife, Marilou Tork, a choice: pack up and move to London or Ireland. Hamill, the guy who fought the Empire, was ready to fight the TSA instead.
But Marilou, who met Hamill while working as a dental hygienist cleaning his teeth, had other plans. A week after Hamill floated the idea, she quietly told him, “I’m surprised you would allow him to force you out of your own country.” Hamill recalls thinking, “‘That son of a b****. I’m not leaving.’” Clever move, Marilou. The lifelong Democrat had to admit, she had a point, he told The Times.
Hamill described dealing with U.S. politics as exhausting. He called out “the bullying, the incompetence, the people in place” during the Trump administration. His coping mechanism is to treat it like a “thick, sprawling political novel” instead of reality. Despite the chaos, he still believes there are more honest and decent people in the country than MAGA supporters, joking that if he didn’t, he’d just move back to England.
Politics isn’t the only thing that makes Hamill hesitate before taking a role. He nearly passed on playing The Major in the upcoming Stephen King adaptation, The Long Walk. In the film, The Major runs a deadly walking contest where 100 young men must keep a pace of four miles an hour—or risk being shot. Hamill said he struggled with the film’s connection to American gun culture. Director Francis Lawrence reassured him, pointing out that Hamill’s discomfort wasn’t misplaced. The actor also drew parallels between the movie and real-world ICE arrests, where agents in masks and without identification “pulled people out of their cars” and “kneel on their necks.” Hamill didn’t intend for the film to feel topical, but it ended up being uncomfortably timely.
Of course, Hamill’s life is inseparable from Star Wars. He led the original trilogy: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). He also returned for the sequels: The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). And voiced Luke in The Clone Wars and appeared in The Mandalorian.
Now, after decades of Jedi heroics, Hamill says he’s done with Luke Skywalker. “I am so grateful to George [Lucas] for letting me be a part of that back in the day, the humble days when George called Star Wars ‘the most expensive low-budget movie ever made,’” he said. “We never expected it to become a permanent franchise and a part of pop culture like that. But my deal is, I had my time. I’m appreciative of that, but I really think they should focus on the future and all the new characters.”
And of course, Hamill couldn’t leave without one last joke. “When I disappeared in [The Last Jedi], I left my robes behind. And there’s no way I’m gonna appear as a naked Force ghost.” Luke Skywalker is hanging up his Jedi robes, for now, but he probably isn’t leaving the galaxy, and his country, for good.
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