Do we like Mark Hamill?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long record of backing LGBTQ+ people in public, with one messy Rowling 'like' and one tasteless Trump post as the marks against him.
Mark Hamill was born in Oakland in 1951, one of seven kids in a Navy family that moved around California, New York and Japan. He studied drama at Los Angeles City College, did soaps and sitcoms, then landed Luke Skywalker just before Eight Is Enough aired and became a star after Star Wars landed in 1977.
The part that made him a legend also nearly swallowed him. He later built a second career in voice work, with the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series from 1992 as the headline act. He's said his old mate Carrie Fisher told him to quit dodging the role: “Get over yourself.” He came round to embracing it.
On the harm test, his record leans the right way. He has publicly mocked Ben Shapiro over Florida's so-called Don't Say Gay bill, and has said Luke can be read as gay if you want him to be, though that second one has drawn criticism from some quarters. The blot is the J.K. Rowling thing: in 2023 he liked a Rowling tweet aimed at trans broadcaster India Willoughby, and fans were cross. He said he backs “human rights for EVERYONE”, and PinkNews noted he'd apologised for a similar like in 2019.
Beyond that, we found no sign he has campaigned against anyone's rights, pushed health or climate misinformation, or made a habit of working with people who do. Our searches didn't turn up a deep check of his recent projects, so treat that as a gap rather than a clean bill. What he mostly does is sound off about Trump: after the 2024 election he told The Times he'd thought of leaving the US, then decided “I'm not leaving.”
The recent stoush is the Trump post. In May 2026 he put up an AI image of Trump dead across a grave with the caption “If Only”, and the White House called it a call to violence. Hamill deleted it, said he'd meant the opposite of dead and apologised if you found it inappropriate. It's an ugly look for a bloke with that much reach, and where you land depends on whether you read it as a dark joke or a wish.
The good stuff is a long run of public decency. He's been a vocal ally for LGBTQ+ people for years, he speaks out for Ukraine, and he's spent decades turning up for fans. Fans did grumble about his $700 autograph prices in early 2026, but that's pricing, not character, and it's the worst the search turned up.