Well, that's one way to achieve gender equality. Just days after actress Carrie Fisher revealed she was asked to lose 35 pounds in order to keep her role as Leia Organa in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mark Hamill told Rolling Stone that he too had to trim down to become Luke Skywalker once more. (Like sister, like brother.)
[seealso slug="count-down-to-the-force-awakens-with-our-star-wars-advent-calendar"]
The 64-year old Hamill -- whose role in The Force Awakens is still so hushed that he hasn't even been seen in a trailer -- has been training and dieting for the past few years. Fisher said that the culture of Los Angeles is all about highlighting how people look, but Hamill doesn't want to hear that: "It implies that I looked so dreadful before!" he said.
"Look at what I'm eating now instead of potato chips and bagels," he told Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt over a plate of mixed fruit. "I'm on the 'if it tastes good, don't eat it' diet."
In the interview, Hamill also discussed the indelible legacy of Star Wars in a world where film provides parallels and escape.
"The world is so horrible," he said. "
His career has shifted to smaller roles and voiceover work, but returning to Star Wars was a powerful experience.
"It was opening up all these little windows in your memory banks," Hamill said. "How it felt to be sitting in it or just the smell of it all or where Chewie was playing chess. So you laugh a lot. I mean, you just can't believe that this is happening. It just doesn't seem real."
Harrison Ford felt the same way -- once he got over his old notion that Han Solo should have died in Return of the Jedi.
"I was only going to do three [movies], so I wanted to use the character to supply some bass notes, some gravitas," Ford told the magazine. "But if they'd done that then, I wouldn't have this experience, which I think is worthy."