Even Mark Hamill is still impressed with his ‘Star Wars’ screen test
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In hindsight, it’s perfectly clear: Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford were naturals together in their first screen test for the 1977 blockbuster “Star Wars.”
The day of the on-camera audition was the first day the actors had met, according to Hamill. He shared the clip via Twitter on Sunday, answering a request for comment posed to him by a journalist who’d come across the footage by of a woman who tweets mostly retro clips from Los Angeles.
“Neither 1 of us had read the script at this point, only this 1 scene,” tweeted the 67-year-old, who was 25 when the movie was released. Ford, now 77, was 34 at the first “Star Wars” premiere.
“I asked George [Lucas] what kind of movie it was-’Let’s just do it, we’ll talk about that later,’” Hamill wrote. “We never did talk about it later-we just did it.”
Ford had previously appeared in Lucas’ “American Graffiti,” and Hamill was doing a lot of TV work when Lucas cast them in his space Western.
“Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope,” which in 1977 was known simply as “Star Wars,” would go on to launch — pardon our French — a movie empire that now includes three trilogies and some stand-alone films, plus major theme park attractions.
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