Joining a fascinating array of actors who could also be in consideration with awards season honing in, Mark Hamill discusses his career and journey to stardom on the latest THR Actor Roundtable, joining fellow GFFA actor Jeremy Allen White and five other potential Oscar contenders as they delve into their current projects, Hamills being The Life of Chuck which arrives on Netflix UK on Monday 5th January.

The seven men who gathered for THR‘s Oscar season Actors Roundtable — Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, The Life of Chuck’s Mark Hamill, The Smashing Machine’s Dwayne Johnson, Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan, The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura, Jay Kelly’s Adam Sandler and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s Jeremy Allen White — don’t share very much in common.

Pive are American (Hamill, Johnson, Jordan, Sandler and White), one is Australian (Elordi) and one is Brazilian (Moura). Their ages span from 20s (Elordi, 28) to 70s (Hamill, 74). Some shot to fame on TV (Elordi on Euphoria, Jordan on The Wire, Moura on Narcos, Sandler on Saturday Night Live and White on Shameless), another in movies (Hamill via a little film called Star Wars) and still another in, of all things, wrestling (Johnson).

HAMILL: “When you do something well in Hollywood, they want you to do that over and over again because it’s a proven entity. I went to Broadway because I knew that there were open auditions. It wasn’t like they were saying, “Please come here and do theater!” When I got into voiceover, I thought, “Where has this been all my life?” Because they cast with their ears, not their eyes, and you’re able to play parts you’d never get in a million years if you were on camera. And I got really spoiled — I got to the point where I thought, “I don’t care if I ever do on-camera again.” But I was a fan of Mike’s before he contacted me for The Fall of the House of Usher — he has these wonderful ensembles, and I love ensembles because the weight of the picture’s not on your shoulders — and we just clicked. The second time he called me, he said, “I have something you might be interested in that’s based on a Stephen King novella.” Based on Mike’s reputation and Stephen King’s, I was expecting the supernatural epic of all time, but The Life of Chuck is a life-affirming portrait of a young man at four different stages of his life. I was knocked out by it. If it weren’t for Mike, I think I’d still just be doing voiceover because the older you get, the less you care — this is something you all have to look forward to! (Laughs.) I shouldn’t put it that way. You do care, but you don’t sweat the small stuff.”