Trivia: When Mark Hamill accepted the role of Luke Skywalker in George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy, he had no idea that he was going to become a cultural icon of callow youth, raw courage, and true heroism. Hamill was born the son of a naval captain, one of nine brothers and sisters. Hamill spent much of his youth traveling to different bases in the U.S. and Japan. He was studying drama at Los Angeles City Drama when he landed his first professional acting role as a guest star on the television series The Bill Cosby Show. Between 1972 and 1973, Hamill played Kent Murray on the television soap General Hospital and also did guest appearances on other television shows and in TV movies. In 1974, Hamill co-starred in The Texas Wheelers, a down-home sitcom that only lasted a season. He made his screen debut in Star Wars (1977) and became such a big hit that he had trouble getting other types of roles. Shortly before the release of Star Wars, Hamill was involved in a terrible car crash that resulted in surgeons having to reconstruct his face. Despite the enormity of Hamill's popularity in this film, he was unable to attain a lucrative film career like his co-star, Harrison Ford, perhaps because he too closely identified with Luke in viewers' minds to be seen as anyone else. Instead, Hamill appeared in films such as Corvette Summer (1978), The Big Red One (1980), and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (1980). Hamill tried his luck on and off-Broadway and won excellent reviews for his work, playing the leads in The Elephant Man and Amadeus. By the 1990s, he had largely been cast in direct-to-video ventures. On television, he provided his voice to at least two animated characters in The Adventures of Batman and Robin. In addition, Hamill starred in several hit CD-ROM games in the Wing Commander series and continues to appear occasionally on television. Finally, Hamill and his cousin, Eric Johnson, co-wrote The Black Pearl comic book series, which Hamill hopes to make into an animated movie.He became famous for voicing The Joker in the animated Batman series, and spoofed his own celebrity with a memorable cameo in Kevin Smith's Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. He continued to find steady work in animated projects like Futurama, Robot Chicken, Danger Ranger, and even Scooby-Doo.

Trivia: If Harrison Ford had listened to the advice of studio heads early in his career, he would have remained a carpenter and never gone on to star in some of Hollywood's biggest films and become one of the industry's most bankable stars. Born July 13, 1942, in Chicago and raised in a middle-class suburb, he had an average childhood. An introverted loner, he was popular with girls but picked on by school bullies. Ford quietly endured their everyday tortures until he one day lost his cool and beat the tar out of the gang leader responsible for his being repeatedly thrown off an embankment. He had no special affinity for films and usually only went to see them on dates because they were inexpensive and dark. Following high school graduation, Ford studied English and Philosophy at Ripon College in Wisconsin. An admittedly lousy student, he began acting while in college and then worked briefly in summer stock. He was expelled from the school three days before graduation because he did not complete his required thesis. In the mid-'60s, Ford and his first wife, Mary Marquardt (his college sweetheart) moved to Hollywood, where he signed as a contract player with Columbia and, later, Universal. After debuting onscreen in a bit as a bellboy in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), he played secondary roles, typically a cowboy, in several films of the late '60s and in such TV series as Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Ironside. Discouraged with both the roles he was getting and his difficulty in providing for his young family, he abandoned acting and taught himself carpentry via books borrowed from the local library. Using his recently purchased run-down Hollywood home for practice, Ford proved himself a talented woodworker, and, after successfully completing his first contract to build an out-building for Sergio Mendez, found himself in demand with other Hollywood residents (it was also during this time that Ford acquired his famous scar, the result of a minor car accident). Meanwhile, Ford's luck as an actor began to change when a casting director friend for whom he was doing some construction helped him get a part in George Lucas' American Graffiti (1973). The film became an unexpected blockbuster and greatly increased Ford's familiarity. Many audience members, particularly women, responded to his turn as the gruffly macho Bob Falfa, the kind of subtly charismatic portrayal that would later become Ford's trademark. However, Ford's career remained stagnant until Lucas cast him as space pilot Han Solo in the megahit Star Wars (1977), after which he became a minor star. He spent the remainder of the 1970s trapped in mostly forgettable films (such as the comedy Western The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder), although he did manage to land the small role of Colonel G. Lucas in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). The early '80s elevated Ford to major stardom with the combined impact of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and his portrayal of action-adventure hero Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which proved to be an enormous hit. He went on to play "Indy" twice more, in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. Ford moved beyond popular acclaim with his role as a big-city police detective who finds himself masquerading as an Amish farmer to protect a young murder witness in Witness (1984), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his work, as well as the praise of critics who had previously ignored his acting ability. Having appeared in several of the biggest money-makers of all time, Ford was able to pick and choose his roles in the '80s and '90s. Following the success of Witness, Ford re-teamed with the film's director, Peter Weir, to make a film adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast. The film met with mixed critical results, and audiences largely stayed away, unused to the idea of their hero playing a markedly flawed and somewhat insane character. Undeterred, Ford went on to choose projects that brought him further departure from the action films responsible for his reputation. In 1988 he worked with two of the industry's most celebrated directors, Roman Polanski and Mike Nichols. With Polanski he made Frantic, a dark psychological thriller that fared poorly among critics and audiences alike. He had greater success with Nichols, his director in Working Girl, a saucy comedy in which he co-starred with Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver. The film was a hit, and displayed Ford's largely unexploited comic talent. Ford began the 1990s with Alan J. Pakula's courtroom thriller Presumed Innocent, which he followed with another Mike Nichols outing, Regarding Henry (1991). The film was an unmitigated flop with both critics and audiences, but Ford allayed his disappointment the following year when he signed an unprecedented 50-million-dollar contract to play CIA agent Jack Ryan in a series of five movies based upon the novels of Tom Clancy. The first two films of the series, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), met with an overwhelming success mirrored by that of Ford's turn as Dr. Richard Kimball in The Fugitive (1993). Ford's next effort, Sydney Pollack's 1995 remake of Sabrina, did not meet similar success, and this bad luck continued with The Devil's Own (which reunited him with Pakula), despite Ford's seemingly fault-proof pairing with Brad Pitt. However, his other 1997 effort, Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One, more than made up for the critical and commercial shortcomings of his previous two films, proving that Ford, even at 55, was still a bona fide, butt-kicking action hero. Stranded on an island with Anne Hesche for his next feature, the moderately successful romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), Ford subsequently appeared in the less successful romantic drama Random Hearts. Bouncing back a bit with Robert Zemeckis' horror-flavored thriller What Lies Beneath, the tension would remain at a fever pitch as Ford and crew raced to prevent a nuclear catastrophe in the fact based deep sea thriller K-19: The Widowmaker. As the 2000's unfolded, Ford would prove that he had a strong commitment to being active in film, continuing to work in projects like Hollywood Homicide, Firewall, Extraordinary Measures, Morning Glory, and Cowboys & Aliens. Ford would also reprise one of his most famous roles for the disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Trivia: Though she was a best-selling author and screenwriter, many fans will always associate Carrie Fisher with the role of Princess Leia from George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. She was the daughter of movie stars Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher and grew up wanting to follow in their footsteps. When Fisher was quite young, her father left the family to marry Elizabeth Taylor. Reynolds raised Fisher and her younger brother, Todd Fisher, alone, but then remarried. As a performer, she started appearing with her mother on Vegas nightclub stages at age 12. When she was 15, Fisher left high school to focus on her show business career. The following year, she was a dancer in the Broadway revival of Irene, which starred her mother. Soon after that, Fisher enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama where she studied for 18 months.Fisher made her film debut playing a sexy young thing who succumbs to womanizing Warren Beatty's seduction in Shampoo (1975). Next came the Star Wars films. Her feisty portrayal of the courageous young princess made Fisher a star. But with sudden stardom came a price. In November 1978, she hosted the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. There she met and became friends with John Belushi, and with him got heavily involved with illegal drugs. Fisher became romantically involved with singer/songwriter Paul Simon and married him in the early '80s. Due in part to her drug problems, the marriage lasted less than a year. A near overdose led Fisher to drug and alcohol rehabilitation. She detailed her experiences with drugs and recovery in her witty first novel, Postcards From the Edge (1987). Two years later, Fisher adapted the tale for Mike Nichols' charming and moving screen version which starred Meryl Streep as a drug-addicted daughter trying to make a comeback and compete with a glamorous movie star mother (Shirley MacLaine) who always outshines her.Throughout the '80s, Fisher continued appearing sporadically in feature films, but made little impact as an actress. By the latter part of the decade, her acting career began perking up again with such films as When Harry Met Sally (1989), in which she played Meg Ryan's best friend. Fisher appeared in a few more films and also in the television series Leaving L.A. through 1992 and then abandoned acting for the next five years to focus on child rearing and her writing career. Subsequent novels include Surrender the Pink, a semi-autobiographical novel exploring her relationship with Paul Simon, and Delusions of Grandma. In 1997, Fisher returned to feature films playing a small role in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. She also experienced renewed fame when George Lucas released restored and enhanced versions of his Star Wars series in 1996. Although she became better known for her writing than her acting, she continued to appear in movies such as Lisa Picard Is Famous, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Fanboys, and the 2008 remake of The Women. In 2010 her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, in which she recounted her career and her life, was filmed. In 2015, she returned to her most iconic character, now General Leia, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fisher suffered a fatal heart attack in 2016, and died at age 60.

Trivia: A member of a generation of British actors that included Sir Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson, Sir Alec Guinness possessed an astonishing versatility that was amply displayed over the course of his 66-year career. Dubbed "the outstanding poet of anonymity" by fellow actor Peter Ustinov, Guinness was a consummate performer, effortlessly portraying characters that ranged from eight members of the same family to an aging Jedi master. Synonymous throughout most of his career with old-school British aplomb and dry wit, the actor was considered to be second only to Olivier in his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. Theater critic J.C. Trewin once described Guinness as possessing "a player's countenance, designed for whatever might turn up." The latter half of this description was an apt summation of the actor's beginnings, which were positively Dickensian. Born into poverty in London on April 2, 1914, Guinness was an illegitimate child who did not know the name on his birth certificate was Guinness until he was 14 (until that time he had used his stepfather's surname, Stiven). Guinness never met his biological father, who provided his son's private school funds but refused to pay for his university education. It was while working as an advertising copywriter that Guinness began going to the theatre, spending his pound-a-week salary on tickets. Determined to become an actor himself, he somehow found the money to pay for beginning acting lessons and subsequently won a place at the Fay Compton School of Acting. While studying there, he was told by his acting teacher Martita Hunt that he had "absolutely no talent." However, Sir John Gielgud apparently disagreed: as the judge of the end-of-term performance, he awarded Guinness an acting prize and further rewarded him with two roles in his 1934 production of Hamlet. Three years later, Guinness became a permanent member of Gielgud's London company and in 1938, playing none other than Hamlet himself. In 1939, Guinness' stage version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, which featured the actor as Herbert Pocket, caught the attention of fledgling director David Lean. Seven years later, Lean would cast Guinness in the novel's screen adaptation; the 1946 film was the actor's second screen engagement, the first being the 1934 Evensong, in which he was an extra. It was in Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) that he had his first memorable onscreen role as Fagin, although his portrayal -- complete with stereotypically Semitic gestures and heavy makeup -- aroused charges of anti-Semitism in the United States that delayed the film's stateside release for three years. Guinness won bona fide international recognition for his work in Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), an Ealing black comedy that featured him as eight members of the d'Ascoyne family. He would subsequently be associated with a number of the classic Ealing comedies, including The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Detective (1954), and The Ladykillers (1955). In 1955, Guinness' contributions to the arts were recognized by Queen Elizabeth, who dubbed him Commander of the British Empire. Two years later, he received recognition on the other side of the Atlantic when he won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as Colonel Nicholson, a phenomenally principled and at times foolhardy British POW in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Ironically, Guinness turned down the role twice before being persuaded to take it by producer Sam Spiegel; his performance remained one of the most acclaimed of his career. In 1960, Guinness once again earned acclaim for his portrayal of another officer, in Tunes of Glory. Cast as hard-drinking, ill-mannered Scottish Lieutenant-Colonel Jock Sinclair, a role he would later name as his favorite, the actor gave a powerful performance opposite John Mills as the upper-crust British officer assigned to take over his duties. He subsequently became associated with David Lean's great epics of the 1960s, starring as Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and as Zhivago's brother in Dr. Zhivago (1965); much later in his career, Guinness would also appear in Lean's A Passage to India (1984) as Professor Godbole, an Indian intellectual. Although Guinness continued to work at a fairly prolific pace throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his popularity was on the wane until director George Lucas practically begged him to appear as Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). The role earned the actor his third Academy Award nomination (his second came courtesy of his screenplay for Ronald Neame's 1958 satire The Horse's Mouth) and introduced him to a new generation of fans. Guinness reprised the role for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983); although the role Obi Wan was perhaps the most famous of his career and earned him millions, he reportedly hated the character and encouraged Lucas to kill him off in the trilogy's first installment so as to limit his involvement in the subsequent films.After receiving an honorary Academy Award in 1979, Guinness did a bit of television (most notably a 1979 adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and acted onscreen in supporting roles. In 1988 he earned a slew of award nominations -- including his fourth Oscar nomination -- for his work in a six-hour adaptation of Dickens' Little Dorrit. In addition to acting, Guinness focused his attention on writing, producing two celebrated memoirs. He died on August 5, 2000, at the age of 86, leaving behind his wife of 62 years, a son, and one of the acting world's most distinguished legacies.

Trivia: British actor David Prowse began weightlifting at the age of 16 and became his country's champion in that field five years later, holding on to the title for two years. Theatrical producers and filmakers found the imposed Prowse to be an excellent type for supernatural roles; he was cast as Death in the play -- Don't Let Summer Come -- principally because the role required Prowse to pick up and carry off one of the cast members. Following a bit in his first film, Casino Royale (1967), Prowse settled into horror films. He wasn't quite able to carry on the Karloff tradition as the Monster in The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) due to rather unimaginative makeup and uninspired direction. The actor's subsquent monster in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1972) was more effective (with a truly disgusting makeup job), as was his role as wheelchair-bound Patrick Magee's foreboding bodyguard in A Clockwork Orange (1971). Prowse's widest international exposure occured in three films in which neither his voice was heard nor his face seen. He was paid $12,000 for his role as Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977) Prowse had his voice dubbed by James Earl Jones, who received $10,000. Both Prowse and Jones repeated their work in the Star Wars sequels Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983); but when David Prowse's black helmet mask was finally pulled off in Return of the Jedi (1983), the closeup was of an entirely different actor with a whole new voice!

Trivia: Not to be confused with the honey-voiced radio tenor of the same name, British dwarf actor Kenny Baker was a fixture of science-fiction and horror films of the 1970s and 1980s. A nightclub performer who, like America's Michael Dunn, traded in more on his talent than his size, the 3'8" Baker was cast in Star Wars (1977) as the beep-boop-beeping minirobot R2-D2, while his nightclub partner Jack Purvis was given the smaller role of the chief Jawa. Baker gave one of the few all-motorized human performances in film history. Once jammed into his robot costume, he was unable to move about and had to rely on a sophisticated remote controls - and when those didn't work, he had to be pulled around on nylon ropes. Additionally, the noisemaking computer controls on the R2D2 shell were so loud that Baker didn't know if a take was over unless someone banged on the costume with a hammer. Somehow Baker survived both his tight hardware exterior and the sweltering Tunisian heat on location, and appeared in both Star Wars sequels, as well as such other oddball movie projects as The Elephant Man (1980), Time Bandits (1981) and Mona Lisa (1988). And in the Oscar-winning Amadeus (1984), Kenny Baker could be seen without his R2D2 getup as a jester-like performer in one of Mozart's comic operas.Baker returned to R2 in the second set of Star Wars films, beginning in 1999, but retired from the role once that trilogy ended in 2005. He was a consultant on 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Baker died in 2016, at age 81.

Trivia: While British actor Anthony Daniels' face and name may not be immediately familiar to the moviegoing public, his primary film role most assuredly is: fussy aureate android C-3PO in the phenomenally popular Star Wars saga. Though acting was his passion, Daniels did not attempt to make it his career until his mid-twenties. After three years in drama school, Daniels won a job on BBC Radio and soon moved to theater, joining Britain's Young Vic Company. Daniels had been a professional thespian for only two years when he, despite initial reluctance, agreed to play C-3PO in George Lucas' record-breaking sci-fi fantasy Star Wars (1977). Paired with the bolder droid R2D2, C-3PO fretfully joined Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in the old-fashioned battle against the evil Dark Side; his gold anthropomorphized machine body became a prominent symbol of Lucas' elaborately conceived cinematic universe. The blockbuster sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), also featured Daniels as the popular droid. Though Daniels moved on to other acting projects, including the animated Lord of the Rings (1978), I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1989), and the fourth installment of British television's acclaimed Prime Suspect series, he also authored the comic book The Protocol Offensive about C-3PO. When Lucas began production in the late '90s on the trio of prequels to the original Star Wars, Daniels was one of the few original cast members the story allowed to return -- and Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace (1999) finally revealed the origin of a pre-gilded age C-3PO.

Trivia: Stands over seven-feet tall. Maintained his job as a hospital worker while playing Chewbacca in the Star Wars films. Established the Peter Mayhew Foundation, a nonprofit organization which helps children and adults in need. Along with his wife Angie, wrote the book My Favorite Giant (2011), which teaches acceptance to young audiences.

Trivia: Imperious, intellectual-looking British actor Peter Cushing studied for a theatrical career under the guidance of Cairns James at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Cushing supported himself as a clerk in a surveyor's office before making his first professional stage appearance in 1935. Four years later, he came to America, where he was featured in a handful of Broadway plays and Hollywood feature films. He had a small part in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and also doubled for Louis Hayward in the "twin" scenes; he was among the rather overaged students in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940); and he was second male lead in the Carole Lombard vehicle Vigil in the Night (1940). After closing out his Hollywood tenure with They Dare Not Love (1941), he returned to stage work in England. His next film appearance was as Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), which also featured his future co-star Christopher Lee in a nonspeaking bit (Cushing and Lee's paths would cross again cinematically in Moulin Rouge [1952], though, as in Hamlet, they shared no scenes).In the early '50s, Cushing became a TV star by virtue of his performance in the BBC production of George Orwell's 1984. Still, film stardom would elude him until 1957, when he was cast as Baron Frankenstein in Hammer Films' The Curse of Frankenstein. It was the first of 19 appearances under the Hammer banner; Cushing went on to play Van Helsing in Horror of Dracula (1958) and Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), roles which, like Baron Frankenstein, he would repeat time and again. Though his horror film appearances brought him fame and fortune, Cushing ruefully commented that he'd prefer not to be so tightly typecast: It is significant that his entry in the British publication Who's Who in the Theatre lists all of his theatrical credits, but only one title -- Hamlet -- in his film manifest. In 1975, after a decade's absence, Cushing made a return to the theater in Washington Square, ironically playing the role originated on Broadway by fellow Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone. Many of Cushing's later film assignments were in the tongue-in-cheek category, notably his sneeringly evil Governor Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and his backwards-talking librarian in Top Secret! (1984). Retiring from the screen in 1986, Peter Cushing penned two volumes of memoirs: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting (1988).

Trivia: In films from the early 1940s, American actor Phil Brown held down supporting roles in most of his Hollywood films. Brown was eighth-billed as Jimmy Brown in his earliest screen credit, the Paramount aviation epic I Wanted Wings (1941). He was disturbingly convincing as a homicidal maniac in Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942), snapping from normality to viciousness within seconds in several scenes. In The Killers (1946), Brown played Nick Adams, who in the Hemingway story on which the film was based was the narrator but who wound up with little more than a bystander part in the film's opening scene. Moving to Europe in 1950, Brown was put to good use as the victim of a jealous husband in the British-filmed Obsession (1949), released in America as The Hidden Room. Phil Brown remained in England and the Continent for the balance of his career.

Trivia: A mainstay of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Irish actor Eddie Byrne made his film bow in Odd Man Out (1946), a drama which took place during the Irish rebellion. Good-looking enough for leading roles, Byrne managed to star in Time Gentlemen Please (1952) and one or two other British films of the 1950s, but for the most part was utilized in supporting parts. He was particularly busy in the years 1954 through 1958, a time in which, as historian David Quinlan put it, Byrne "seemed to be turning up in every third British film." American moviegoers could see Byrne in such internationally released pictures as Abandon Ship (1957), The Mummy (1959) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Eddie Byrne returned to live and work in Ireland in the mid 1960s, though he'd occasionally surface in British-filmed productions like Star Wars (1977), in which he played General Willard. The actor should not be confused with American TV star Ed "Kookie" Byrnes - if indeed such confusion is possible.

Trivia: British actor Drewe Henley appeared in many films during the '60s and '70s, but he is best known for his work on the London and New York stages. Henley has also appeared on television.

Trivia: Denis Lawson has gone through a good part of his professional career since 1977 being thought of simply as X-Wing fighter pilot Wedge Antilles, a part he first played in Star Wars and reprised (with more screen time each time) in The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. The character is notable for being one of the few X-Wing pilots to survive the various battles.Lawson has done far more than a bit part in a major movie, however, having had a steady career in theater, television, and film. He co-starred with Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster in Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, and later headed up a pair of miniseries, The Justice Game and The Justice Game II: The Lady From Rome, as affluent Glasgow lawyer Dominic Rossi. As the '90s drew to a close, much was made of the fact that Lawson is the uncle of Ewan McGregor, the actor cast as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the trilogy of Star Wars prequels.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: British supporting actor Jerry Sinden started out on the London stage in 1972 in a production of Journey's End. He made his feature-film debut playing a bit part in Star Wars (1977). Sinden's other film credits include appearances in Chariots of Fire (1980) and Virtuoso (1989). His television work includes Brideshead Revisited (1982).

Trivia: Actor Don Henderson has played character roles on television and in feature films. In film, Star Wars fans may recognize him for playing General Tagge in the premiere episode of George Lucas' space saga. Henderson was a regular on several television series and starred as the title police officer in Bulman (1982-1985).