Every actor understands the huge significance of being cast in a Star Wars movie.
But how do movie stars actually react when they learn they’re going to play in the
world’s most famous franchise?
Here’s how these Star Wars actors found out they'd been invited to a galaxy far, far
away.
The story of Mark Hamill's casting as Luke Skywalker is often made out to be a typical
Hollywood fairy tale, where the penniless actor on the verge of giving up on his dreams
lands the audition of a lifetime.
And while Luke Skywalker certainly was the role of a lifetime, Hamill was no penniless
actor.
In fact, he has taken to Twitter in the past to dispel the myth that he was sleeping on
his friend Robert Englund's couch when Englund told him to try for the role.
In fact, Hamill not only had his own one-bedroom apartment in Malibu at the time, but his agent
had already set up an audition for him.
Even back in 1977, Hamill was insistent on how mundane the process really was.
"I auditioned like anyone else…”
“And you got the part?”
“Yeah."
That audition process started in 1975, as a joint casting call with Brian De Palma's
supernatural horror flick Carrie.
Hamill was called back for a screen test with Harrison Ford in 1976, and the rest is history.
"If the Empire had a new weapon capable of doing that I’ve had heard about it I’d
know something.”
“Well now you know.
The enemy is on the move we haven’t much time."
Harrison Ford's Star Wars story actually is a little more of a fairy tale.
In 1975, when casting began, Ford hadn't appeared in a film with a theatrical release since
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation in 1974.
He'd started working as a carpenter to make extra money, and it was while he was fixing
up Coppola's office that he ran into George Lucas, who'd directed Ford in 1973's American
Graffiti.
Neither thought much about the reunion until Ford's friend and Lucas' casting agent Fred
Roos recommended Ford stand in as Han Solo with actors auditioning for other parts.
According to Ford, he read with over 100 hopefuls, before being told that he had actually made
it onto the shortlist himself.
Lucas's version of events seems to back this up, too.
"You want do this You wanna stand in you wanna reads some parts against these other parts
so that we can get through this thing, and he said yeah and he started reading and he
read them better than anyone else did."
Of course, Ford was characteristically matter-of-fact about landing the job, saying:
"They asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said, 'Sure, why not?'"
While Hamill and Ford were finding plenty of work but little name recognition, Carrie
Fisher had nailed the recognition but struggled to find work.
Her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, had been a Hollywood golden couple and later
a Hollywood scandal, thanks to Eddie's affair with Elizabeth Taylor.
Meanwhile, Carrie Fisher had made a brief appearance in Shampoo in 1975, and at the
end of that year, while on Christmas break from drama school, she auditioned for Lucas
and Carrie director, Brian De Palma.
In her memoir, Fisher recalled that meeting and being called back to read with Ford.
When her agent called to tell her she'd got the part, Fisher wrote:
"He laughed, then I laughed and dropped the phone and ran out into the front yard and
into the street.
It was raining.
It didn't rain in L.A.
It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia."
As happy as she was to become Princess Leia, however, the role did come with a few drawbacks.
"They asked me to lose - at that point - 10 pounds - they thought it was all in my face."
One person who didn't buy into the hype around the original Star Wars trilogy was Natalie
Portman, who'd yet to turn two years old when Return of the Jedi was released.
She was only 14 when she was offered the role of Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace, but
she'd already found critical acclaim at 13, first as a trainee hitman in Léon: The Professional
and then later in 1995's Heat.
On the press tour for The Phantom Menace, Portman pointed out that she'd never even
seen the other films.
"I hadn't seen the films until it was offered to me so…
I wasn’t really aware of what Star Wars was at all."
Far from leaping at the chance to be in Star Wars, Portman took some time to actually consider
the role before taking it.
"It took me a few weeks to decide but doing this film it’s a huge commitment to sign
on for three films when you're fourteen."
Like Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson didn't entirely know what he was getting himself
into when he met with George Lucas but as a long-time Star Wars fanboy, he was totally
on board nonetheless.
The two first got together after Jackson went on a talk show and mentioned that he'd like
to work with Lucas.
Soon after, Lucas' people got in touch and arranged a meeting.
"He said 'I don't know what you’d do in it but I’m like look: Make me a stormtrooper.
I just wanna run across the screen.
Nobody even needs to know."
A few months later, Jackson said he got a call that Lucas was shooting in London, and
he flew out without even having seen a script.
It was only when he arrived at the costume fitting and was handed the iconic robes that
he learned that he was going to be playing a Jedi.
Jackson also got to choose his own lightsaber handle, which the prop department inscribed
with the initials BMF.
"Now, I want you to go in that bag, and find my wallet.”
“Which one is it?”
“It’s the one that says bad motherf-----."
Jackson later said that, despite his character's unpleasant fate in Revenge of the Sith, he'd
still happily make more Star Wars movies.
Even before being cast as the sequel trilogy's Force-wielding heroine Rey, Daisy Ridley felt
like she was in touch with something supernatural.
"And one of them went oh apparently they’re doing a new Star Wars film.
I literarly my whole body went tingly and I was like, I think I’m going to get a part
in this film."
Psychic revelations notwithstanding, it still took five auditions with director J.J. Abrams
for Ridley to land the role of Rey.
Still, she was offered the role nonetheless, and only ran into trouble when it came to
actually accepting it.
"I checked my voicemail and there was a voicemail and I was like “oh God Oh God” and I was
like and I didn’t know how to call America, because I’d never called America, on my
English phone."
Unfortunately, Ridley's hopes for an immediate celebration were scuppered.
"And I was outside the theater and the play had started and it was a f------ long play."
Before he made six figures playing Finn in The Force Awakens, John Boyega was only really
known for indie alien thriller Attack the Block, and his bank account reflected his
acting struggles.
In 2018, Boyega told an interviewer that he literally drained his savings just to get
a cab ride for his final meeting with Abrams.
The good news?
He got the part.
The bad news?
He had no money to get a ride home.
Once he finally got home, though, Boyega said his immediate reaction was one of relief.
"I was I was looking forward getting a good night’s sleep I wasn’t contemplating on
whether my life was going to change of if I was going to work on a franchise."
However, not everyone at home fully grasped the importance of the moment.
"I was like, dad I’ve just been cast in Star Wars and he was like ‘Oh My God!
You are in Star Wars?
That is fantastic I knew it!
What is Star Wars?’"
Before he was cast in Star Wars, Oscar Isaac was an indie darling who'd appeared in a number
of low budget movies that performed well both with critics and at the box office.
For example, he showed up in Drive and Ex Machina, and played the lead in the Coen brothers'
Inside Llewyn Davis.
However, when Isaac was offered the opportunity to star in The Force Awakens, director J.J.
Abrams had to convince him to sign up for the Star Wars role.
Abrams brought Isaac to Paris in 2014 for a meeting at coffee shop and celebrity hangout
Café de Flore.
And while they were there, Abrams revealed a lot of key details about the project.
As Isaac explained to Vulture:
"He basically told me the whole thing, the whole story.
It was incredibly exciting just to be called in and told that.
It was awesome."
But Isaac was less enthusiastic about playing the skilled yet rebellious pilot Poe Dameron,
telling GQ:
"I didn't know if I could make it interesting."
After a few days thinking it over, he signed up, but wasn't necessarily fulfilled by the
role, explaining:
"I actually felt the most green and insecure that I had in a long time.
[…] It felt weird and like I was not being creative."
Of course, the experience wasn't enough to put him off blockbuster franchises in 2016,
he played the eponymous villain in X-Men: Apocalypse.
Adam Driver was busy filming HBO's critically-acclaimed series Girls when he got the call about Star
Wars.
And Driver's road to the role of Kylo Ren wasn't exactly run-of-the-mill.
In fact, Driver clarified in 2016 that he never even auditioned for the role.
Driver has also said that all that waiting meant it took a while for it to hit him that
he wasn't just preparing for any old film but a Star Wars film.
In the end, it wasn't until he found himself surrounded by the movie's costumes that he
realized what he was in for.
"The new characters and stormtroopers the new updated characters that was the first
time when I was like oh oh my God This is Star Wars."
While a few stars might have professed to not being huge Star Wars fans before they
took their roles in the franchise, Gwendoline Christie was all in on the series.
"I'd wanted to be in Star Wars my whole life you know I’ve been a fan since I was 6 years
old when I first saw the films."
The Game of Thrones actress said she pestered her representatives constantly.
"I was just constantly going on and on about it and just every phone call everything I’d
go just oh they’re interested in you in this and I’d go I want to be in Star Wars."
Like Adam Driver and Samuel L. Jackson, Christie said that it really hit her that she'd made
it when she got to put on Captain Phasma's metal armor and cape.
Of course, pre-Phasma, her favourite character was Leia, and she also majorly fangirled over
meeting Carrie Fisher.
"She's different she’s unafraid, she’s smart, she’s brave, she’s bold, she’s
unashamedly herself."
Domhnall Gleeson learned that he'd landed the role of General Hux the day before The
Force Awakens' now-iconic first table-read.
In January 2016, shortly after The Force Awakens was released, Gleeson went into detail about
actually taking the role of Hux.
"They said he wanted power and he was intent on getting it and he had cool speech."
Evidently, that pitch totally convinced Gleeson.
"You want to do stuff different than you’ve done before and you want to be part of things
which are really good."
But Gleeson did have some misgivings about the fame the role would doubtless bring him.
He explained:
"Fame is the end goal for a lot of people, but it is not mine.
I worried that the accompanying fame would get in the way of how I live my life.
[…] It got a little crazy for a couple of months … and then it died down."
Felicity Jones wasn't quite built for battle when she was cast as Rogue One's street smart
rebel Jyn Erso.
In fact, she was most famous for playing Jane Hawking in the Stephen Hawking biopic The
Theory of Everything, which had earned her an Oscar nomination — but few fighting skills.
"My immediate reaction was that I have to do a hell of a lot of fitness and fight training
in order to play this incredible leading character."
Jones credits her agent with introducing her to the role, telling People:
"My agent said there's a fantastic leading female role in the upcoming Star Wars that
I think you're really going to love.
That was my first encounter with Jyn."
In typical top secret Star Wars fashion, Jones met Rogue One director Gareth Edwards at 5:30
in the morning to discuss the project, and Jones said she knew she had to take the part
when she read the script.
As she put it:
"It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences when you read a role like that.
I just was like, I have to do this."
Even after taking the role, it took a little while for the enormity of it all to sink in.
But Jones loved working on the film… even the intense battle sequences.
As the actress explained:
"There is much joy in being part of it."
Before she landed the role of Rose in The Last Jedi, Kelly Marie Tran was working full-time
in a temp agency by day, occasionally fitting in auditions when they came up, and writing
comedy sketches by night.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she admitted the whole process was beginning
to wear her down.
She explained:
"When I turned 25, I had been at it for some years and I was struggling to pay my bills.
I was tired.
[…] I would get up at 5 AM and then I wouldn't be home until 11 PM.
The days were like that for years."
The auditions for The Last Jedi took five months, which sadly meant that quitting her
day job wasn't an option.
In fact, on the fateful day that she learned she'd been cast in the film, she had to meet
with director Rian Johnson on her lunch break.
And of course, once she found out that she had the part, she had to keep it a secret.
Tran explained:
"So I went back to work, and answered phones and answered emails, like nothing happened.
It was the most bizarre experience.
Inside I was like, 'Ugh!
Crazy!'"
By far the cast's biggest Star Wars nerd, Laura Dern has admitted that being in Star
Wars was pretty much the dream of a lifetime.
"When I was a little girl about two blocks from here at the Cinorama Dome was the first
time I ever waited in line to see a movie being Star Wars."
But when director Rian Johnson first pitched Dern the idea, the exact nature of the role
didn't quite register at first.
"Where is it in small town America or is it, no no no.
It’s Star Wars.
I was like: you’re F------ kidding me I'm sorry."
For a while, Dern thought he was speaking metaphorically about her character, until
Johnson finally admitted that he'd called her in to talk about Star Wars.
But once she got to set, Dern felt the full force of her new role.
"I got to set and they rolled camera and I opened my eyes and they called action and
I was just staring at C-3PO and I started to cry."
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