“Never enter my life again”: the movie Mark Hamill will never forgive his agent for offering him
While his Star Wars compatriot Harrison Ford went on to play numerous other memorable characters, Mark Hamill still feels very much tied to Luke Skywalker.
Despite starring in the biggest movie of all time, the young Jedi couldn’t translate his superstardom into lasting success, or at least, that’s how it looks on the surface, because if you take the time to look into his career, you’ll find that there’s much more to his career on the big screen and small.
He had a small role in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and, more recently, in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and on the small screen, he guest-starred in an episode of What We Do in the Shadows, playing Jim in ‘On the Run’, the episode that gave the world Jackie Daytona. Additionally, he’s also one of the most prolific and celebrated voice actors of recent times, giving memorable performances in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Futurama, and as the Joker in numerous forms of Batman media.
Had things gone differently, however, we might be associating Hamill with something very, very different, as one of the nicest celebrities ever revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that he once received an offer for an infamous film, one you wouldn’t be able to guess in a million years.
“Someone said, ‘They want you to be in The Human Centipede Part 2’”, he declared, “They explained the premise to me, and I went, ‘Oh my God! Thank you for putting those images in my head, and I’ll never forgive you for doing so’. But that was an easy one. I said, ‘No, don’t send the script’. The premise alone, I’ll never see one, and I really resent the fact that some human being thought of that concept of sewing people together, mouth to anus. Goodbye, and never enter my life again.”
The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) is the second film in Tom Six’s infamous body horror trilogy, where the first film caught the world’s attention (and turned more than a few stomachs) in 2009. The director wanted to go even further for the follow-up, which is precisely what he did, and without going into too much gory detail (you’ll be pleased to hear), this film adds more people to the titular train of human misery, as a deranged fan of the original film attempts to bring his twisted vision to life.
The film was roundly decried by anyone with even a hint of good taste, famously earning Roger Ebert’s final ever zero-star review, which is…something.
I have no earthly idea what Hamill was going to do in this movie, as the series isn’t exactly known for its star-studded casts. Despite becoming something of a ‘cult hit’, any self-respecting celebrity still wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. Maybe he was going to play a version of himself who was targeted by the main antagonist? That simply doesn’t bear thinking about.
Thankfully, Hamill had the smarts to decline what would have surely been career suicide, although it does generate one of the most fascinating ‘what ifs?’ in movie history, but I simply cannot or rather not, imagine it.
