Mark Hamill.

Before the present trend of star-driven animated films, the voices behind the cartoons where often nameless; and for every industry icon, like Mel Blanc, there were many other actors whose names passed by unknown, only to be briefly glimpsed during closing credits. Today, many of Hollywood's television and movie stars compete for voice work in such hip, prime-time TV series as The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-head, as well as blockbuster theatrical films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Pocohantas.

Mark Hamill is one of today's leading voice-over talents, and can be considered a modern-day pioneer in the field, having spent time and effort honing his craft, well before it found itself became a trend. Unlike other actors who bring only their voice to the animation, Hamill travels with a repertoire of over 200 voices--the result of many years of hard work. "I have always imitated people, and I love the musical sound of the human voice," Mark explained. "When I first began doing voice-over work, I said to my wife Marilou, 'What took me so long?' I came to doing cartoons and voice-overs via Broadway, because that is where I needed to go to be able to do comedy." Mark began collecting voices as far back as 1974, when he provided the voice of Jeannie's master in the classic television series, I Dream of Jeannie (1973-75).

From the CD-ROM game Wing Commander. Photo courtesy of Origin Systems.

With his career as a television actor burgeoning, Mark was cast as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (1977), and its two sequels--The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). As Jedi was opening, Mark was playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Peter Shaffer's play, Amadeus. His Broadway career also included a starring role as Tony Hart in Harrigan & Hart (1985), for which he got a Drama Desk nomination for "Best Actor in a Musical." In 1981, Mark returned to voice work for National Public Radio's popular adaptations of the Star Wars movies.

Getting Into Animation
In 1987, he lent his voice talents for Pinocchio and Norby the Mixed Up Robot on TV. Hamill's voice-over star rose dramatically in 1992, when he was cast as the maniacal Joker and Ferris Boyle in the Batman: The Animated Series (1992-95). The show was later spun off into a Sega Genesis video game, The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and a movie, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), where he reprised his role as The Joker.

"What I liked about doing the Joker," Mark said, "was his villainy. I thought, you know, I could use this laugh almost as a vocabulary. Instead of having it be one continuous laugh, I could use it like color on a canvas. There could be sinister laughs, there could be joyful, gleeful, maniacal laughs, there could be malevolent and evil laughs. There are so many different colors that you can give him, so that kids will have more than one laugh to mimic on the playground. I do have to thank the people at Batman, because this work opened up an entire new career for me."