| Caption | Hamill in 2007 |
|---|---|
| Birth date | September 25, 1951 |
| Birth name | Mark Richard Hamill |
| Birth place | Concord, California, United States |
| Spouse | Marilou York (1978–present) |
| Children | Nathan Hamill Griffin Hamill Chelsea Hamill |
| Occupation | Actor, voice-actor, producer, director, writer |
| Years active | 1970–present |
For his portrayal of Luke Skywalker, Hamill was twice honored with the Saturn Award for Best Actor (given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films), for his performance in both sequels. The actor also reprised the role for the radio dramatizations of both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but did not participate in the Return of the Jedi radio drama due to budgetary concerns.
Lucas was rumored to have asked Hamill to reprise the role of Luke Skywalker in a Star Wars sequel trilogy as an Obi-Wan Kenobi-type character who passes the torch to the next generation of Jedi Knights. Lucas later dismissed it as nothing more than an off-hand comment.
Reprints of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (which influenced Lucas as he was developing the films) issued after the release of Star Wars in 1977 used the image of Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover.
Hamill played the villainous Hawkins in the Swedish action movie Hamilton in 1998. Some of his other film credits include The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, Britannia Hospital, Slipstream, The Guyver, and the 1995 remake of Village of the Damned. In 1990, he played an escaped mental patient who terrorizes Michael Dudikoff and his wife in Midnight Ride. He also narrated The Sci-Fi Files, a four-part documentary about the influence of science fiction upon present society. In 2001, Hamill starred in the feature film Thank You, Good Night alongside Christian Campbell, J.P. Pitoc, and Sally Kirkland.
In live-action television, Hamill had recurring roles in General Hospital and The Texas Wheelers (both pre-Star Wars), and he appeared as The Trickster in the live-action television series of The Flash, a role he would later reprise in the animated series Justice League Unlimited. He has made cameo appearances on MADtv (where he played the estranged father of Ms. Swan), and appeared on Saturday Night Live (playing himself being sold on a Star Wars themed home shopping sale). Hamill appeared on an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, playing Luke Skywalker during one of the scenes. He appeared on an episode of Just Shoot Me! He also had a guest spot on The Muppet Show as both himself and his "cousin" Luke Skywalker, along with C-3PO, Chewbacca and R2-D2. In 1986, he appeared in an episode of the TV series The Amazing Stories ("Gather Ye Acorns") in the role of Jonathan, who is advised by "Mother Nature's only son" to not discard his childhood belongings, which causes him trouble during his adult life. As he grows older, he is able to auction off his belongings as memorabilia, becoming wealthy in the process. He also had a recurring role as Tobias LeConte on seaQuest DSV.He also had a small role as Henry in "The Bill Cosby Show" from 1970.
Hamill appeared as Cock-Knocker in the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He also parodies Luke Skywalker in a "bong saber" duel with Jay and Silent Bob in which he says, "Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son." When his large, fake right hand prop is cut off in the film's duel, he sighs, looks at the camera and says, "Not again." This was the first time that Hamill and his Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher appeared in a film together since Return of the Jedi, although they share no scenes. He also provides the voice of Scooby-Doo in the scene which parodies the animated show, where Scooby says "Hi, Ray and Rirent Rob".
Hamill also directed and starred in the 2004 direct-to-DVD . A comic book fan who attended science fiction and comic conventions before he became famous, Hamill claimed that his character was based on an exaggerated version of himself. He and his crew shot most of the "mockumentary" film during the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con, and enlisted even Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, and Hugh Hefner in small roles. The movie won an award for Best Live-Action DVD Premiere Movie at the 2005 DVD Exclusive Awards.
Hamill also voiced the Joker in three episodes of , five episodes of The New Batman Adventures, five episodes of Justice League, and an episode of Static Shock. He also voiced the Joker in the theatrical film (1993) and the direct-to-video film (2000).
The short-lived WB live action series, Birds of Prey, based on the comic book of the same title, featured a flashback sequence in which the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) and paralyzes her. This sequence featured Hamill voicing the Joker, dubbed over an actor whose facial structure more resembled the character. The actor's face was shot in the background so as to be slightly blurred. Hamill also voiced the Joker alongside his Batman: The Animated Series co-star Kevin Conroy as Batman and Jason Hillhouse as Dick Grayson in a feature of a storyboard scene included in the 2005 Special Edition DVD of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film. This scene depicted the origin of Robin, which wasn't filmed because the producers felt it was out of place with the rest of the movie. He starred in the animated series Regular Show, played the voice as [Skips].
Hamill has confirmed that the video game , the upcoming sequel to the popular , will be the final time he voices the Joker.
Hamill also provided voice-acting for villains Solomon Grundy and the Trickster in the DC animated universe series Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Hamill has since voiced villain Tony Zucco in The Batman, a more recent animated series which is unrelated to the various DCAU series. He will also soon voice another DC hero, the Spectre, in an upcoming episode of the currently-running Batman cartoon, .
Long before the DC animated universe, Hamill did voice acting work in the Ralph Bakshi film Wizards, where he played "Sean, leader of the Knights of Stardust". The film was released on the same weekend as Star Wars.
Hamill later did the voice of Lawrance "Larry" 3000, in Cartoon Network's animated series Time Squad. He also guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Mayored to the Mob". On the audio commentary of the episode he says that he has been a fan of the show since it first aired in 1990. and that it was a personal thrill to work with Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson.
His success as The Joker has led to other villain roles in other animated series, including the Gargoyle in the animated series of The Incredible Hulk, the Hobgoblin in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Maximus in Fantastic Four, Captain Stickybeard in , and the deranged shock jock Dr. Jak in Phantom 2040. He even parodied his Joker role in the Tom & Jerry Kids episode "Droopy Man Returns," and in the Animaniacs episode "The Cranial Crusader", as Johnny Bad-Note. He voiced Py-Ro in , Dr. Julius Pendecker in The Tick, and Niju the Evil Wolf in . He also voiced Christopher "Maverick" Blair in the animated series Wing Commander Academy.
He also guest starred in two episodes of The Flash as The Trickster. In 1999 he provided the voice of Van Ripper in The Night of the Headless Horseman. He voiced the character of Chanukah Zombie for the 2007 straight-to-DVD release .
Hamill performs the voice of the villain Undergrowth in the Danny Phantom episode "Urban Jungle." More recently, he provided the voice of series antagonist Fire Lord Ozai in and Skeleton King in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!. He also guest starred as The Moth in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Night Light". Additionally, he played the latter character in the Mina and the Count shorts.
In the Hanna-Barbera Productions cartoon , Hamill voiced Jonny K., the Red Lynx, and , among others. He is also a recurring voice actor on Seth Green's Robot Chicken. Adult Swim listed Hamill as one of the channel's best Voice Actors.
In April 2009, he had a voice cameo in the NASA animated short "Robot Astronomy Talk Show: Gravity and the Great Attractor," part of the web-series IRrelevant Astronomy, produced by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
He is currently doing voicework for several characters in the Metalocalypse animated series and did a special guest appearance on The Boondocks in the episode Mr. Medicinal on Adult Swim. He also voices Frank the Director in Random! Cartoons on Frederator Studios.
Hamill provides the voice of Jameson Burkright in the mini-series comedy The Wrong Coast, and Yamma in the joint Cartoon Network/Production I.G anime series IGPX Immortal Grand Prix. In early 2010, Mark Hamill voiced as Dante's father in the anime film version of Dante's Inferno.
When the Wing Commander series of computer games started using full motion video cut scenes, Hamill was cast as the series protagonist, Colonel Christopher Blair, a role he played in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994), Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995), and Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997). (In the 1999 Wing Commander film, set earlier in the series, the character was played by Freddie Prinze, Jr.) He did however, have a cameo, as did many of the other actors who did voiceovers for the game. Hamill was also cast as the voice of Christopher Blair in the animated television series Wing Commander Academy.
Other notable computer-game roles (voice only) include Detective Mosely in , Assistant Director Wilson in , several characters in the LucasArts game Full Throttle (including the game's main villain, Adrian Ripburger), and Wolverine in , the tie-in game to the movie X-Men 2. Hamill also provided a voice for one of the selectable voicesets in Icewind Dale (Heart of Winter expansion) and also two of the primary characters of Starsiege, one of them a young warrior leading a rebellion against an empire. Hamill voiced characters for , and also played the role of Emperor Griffon in the PlayStation 2 role-playing game Dark Cloud 2, as well as Colonel Kroitz in Grandia Xtreme.
He portrayed the Joker in a few Batman-themed video games, notably Batman Vengeance, the Sega CD version of The Adventures of Batman & Robin, and in . Hamill will again reprise his role of The Joker in as well as the computer and Playstation 3 MMORPG DC Universe Online.
While some have mistakenly suspected that he reprised his role as Luke Skywalker for LucasArts' and , the character is actually voiced by Bob Bergen (also the voice of Porky Pig and others). Hamill's likeness is also used as an alternative character model in the Wii and PlayStation 2 versions of . The PlayStation 2 and Wii editions feature both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi models.
He narrated a documentary on the United States' 1st Infantry Division. Footage from the documentary was used in the video game . He has appeared in two installments in the Crash Bandicoot series: in as Py-Ro the Fire Elemental, and in as the Znu.
Hamill did voiceover work for the PlayStation 2 game Yakuza, where he plays Goro Majima, a lieutenant in a Yakuza family. He is also the voice of Malefor the Dark Master in . He also lent his vocal talents to Darksiders, as The Watcher.
Hamill also lent his voice to the English version of the PlayStation Portable title, as Master Eraqus. The game's director, Tetsuya Nomura, stated in an interview that he chose Hamill for the part specifically because of his role as Luke Skywalker.
He also provided the entire cast of voices for a 1983 audiobook version of Pinocchio (with unique characteristics for each). Hamill also reads life into the characters of the popular juvenile fiction book series, The Spiderwick Chronicles Volumes I-III, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.
Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:American comics writers Category:American film actors Category:American soap opera actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American video game actors Category:American voice actors Category:Military brats Category:California Democrats Category:People from Oakland, California Category:People from California Category:Saturn Award winners Category:Actors from California Category:Interactive Achievement Award winners Category:American actors of Swedish descent
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| Name | Kevin Conroy |
|---|---|
| Birth date | November 30, 1955 |
| Birth place | Westbury, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Yearsactive | 1980–present |
Kevin Conroy (born November 30, 1955) is an American actor of stage, screen and voice, best known for his voice role as Batman in numerous animated television series, feature films, and video games that comprised the DC Animated Universe.
Conroy is well remembered by fans for being the first person in animation to use two distinct voices to portray Bruce Wayne and Batman, which was Conroy's idea. He is also portraying Batman in the online video game: DC Universe Online.
In recent years, he has pursued a writing career.
He took part in the California AIDSRide from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City, Conroy helped out in the relief efforts by volunteering to do cooking duties for officers and firefighters. On the DVD's commentary, he told the story about it, and how another cook found out he was the voice of Batman. He asked if he could tell everyone, and Conroy agreed, though he thought no one would even know who he was. At the other cook's urging, Conroy yelled in the voice of Batman, "I am vengeance! I am the night! I... am... Batman!" (a line he had famously delivered in the episode "Nothing to Fear" from ) eliciting cheers from the first responders eating at the relief center. They began telling him what their favorite episodes were, and how they had watched the show with their kids. He said it was the first time he had seen any of them smile or laugh since the attacks a week earlier.
Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:American voice actors Category:American television actors Category:American stage actors Category:People from Long Island Category:People from Westport, Connecticut Category:Juilliard School alumni
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| Caption | Ford in 2009 |
|---|---|
| Birth date | July 13, 1942 |
| Birth place | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor/Producer |
| Years active | 1966–present |
| Spouse | Mary Marquardt (1964–1979; divorced) Melissa Mathison (1983–2004; divorced) Calista Flockhart (2010–present) |
Harrison Ford (born July 13, 1942) is an American film actor and producer. He is best known for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. Ford is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. His four-decade career also includes roles in several other Hollywood blockbusters, including Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One, and What Lies Beneath. At one point, three of the top five box-office hits of all time included one of his roles. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.
In 1997, Ford was ranked # 1 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. As of July 2008, the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford's films total almost $3.4 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star. Ford is the husband of actress Calista Flockhart.
Ford was active in the Boy Scouts of America, and achieved its second-highest rank, Life Scout. He worked at a scout camp, Napowan Adventure Base, as a counselor for the Reptile Study merit badge. Because of this, he and Eagle Scout director Steven Spielberg later decided that the character of young Indiana Jones would be depicted as a Life Scout in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They also jokingly reversed Ford's knowledge of reptiles into Jones's fear of snakes.
In 1960, Ford graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year (1959–1960). He attended Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. He took a drama class in his junior year, chiefly as a way to meet women. Ford, a self-described "late bloomer", became fascinated with acting.
His speaking roles continued next with Luv (1967), though he was still uncredited. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the 1967 Western film, A Time for Killing, but the "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name. It was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932, and died in 1957. Ford later said that he was unaware of the existence of the earlier Harrison Ford until he came upon a star with his own name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Ford soon dropped the "J" and worked for Universal Studios, playing minor roles in many television series throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Gunsmoke, Ironside, The Virginian, The F.B.I., Love, American Style, and Kung Fu. He appeared in the western Journey to Shiloh (1968) and had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film Zabriskie Point as an arrested student protester. Not happy with the roles being offered to him, Ford became a self-taught professional carpenter to support his then-wife and two small sons. While working as a carpenter, he became a stagehand for the popular rock band The Doors. He also built a sun deck for Sally Kellerman and a recording studio for Sérgio Mendes.
He returned to acting when George Lucas, who had hired him to build cabinets in his home, cast him in a pivotal supporting role for his film American Graffiti (1973). His relationship with Lucas was to have a profound effect on Ford's career. After director Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather was a success, he hired Ford to do expansions of his office and Harrison was given a small role in his next two films, The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979).
The 1990s brought Ford the role of Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy's Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), as well as leading roles in Alan Pakula's Presumed Innocent (1990) and The Devil's Own (1997), Andrew Davis's The Fugitive (1993), Sydney Pollack's remake of Sabrina (1995), and Wolfgang Petersen's Air Force One (1997). Ford has also played straight dramatic roles, including an adulterous husband with a terrible secret in both Presumed Innocent (1990) and What Lies Beneath (2000), and a recovering amnesiac in Mike Nichols' Regarding Henry (1991).
Many of Ford's major film roles came to him by default through unusual circumstances: he won the role of Han Solo while reading lines for other actors, was cast as Indiana Jones because Tom Selleck was not available, and took the role of Jack Ryan due to Alec Baldwin's fee demands (Baldwin had previously played the role in The Hunt for Red October).
In 2004, Ford declined a chance to star in the thriller Syriana, later commenting that "I didn't feel strongly enough about the truth of the material and I think I made a mistake." The role eventually went to George Clooney, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his work. Prior to that, he had passed on a role in another Stephen Gaghan-written role, Robert Wakefield in Traffic. That role went to Michael Douglas.
In 2008, Ford enjoyed success with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, another collaboration between George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The film received generally mixed reviews but was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. He later said he would like to star in another sequel "if it didn't take another 20 years to digest".
Other 2008 work included Crossing Over, directed by Wayne Kramer. In the film, he plays an immigrations officer, working alongside Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta. He also narrated a feature documentary film about the Dalai Lama entitled Dalai Lama Renaissance.
Ford filmed the medical drama Extraordinary Measures in 2009 in Portland, Oregon. Released January 22, 2010, the film also starred Brendan Fraser and Alan Ruck. Also in 2010, he co-starred in the film Morning Glory, along with Patrick Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Diane Keaton.
Recently, he has expressed interest in returning to the Jack Ryan franchise.
In 2006, Ford was awarded the Jules Verne Spirit of Nature Award for his work in nature and wildlife preservation. The ceremony took place at the historic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California.
He received the first ever Hero Award for his many iconic roles, including Han Solo and Indiana Jones, at the 2007 Scream Awards, and in 2008, the Spike TV's Guy's Choice Award for Brass Balls.
Harrison Ford received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2000.
Ford has three grandchildren: Eliel (b. 1993), Giuliana (b. 1997), and Ethan (b. 2000). Son Benjamin owns Ford's Filling Station, a gastro pub in Culver City, California. Son Willard is co-owner of Ford&Ching; showroom as well as Ludwig clothing company.
Ford injured his chin at the age of 20 when his car, a Volvo 544, hit a telephone pole in Northern California; the scar is visible in his films. An explanation for it on film is offered in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when a young Indiana Jones cuts his chin while attempting to crack a whip to ward off a lion. In Working Girl, Ford's character explains that it happened when he passed out and hit his chin on the toilet when a college girlfriend was piercing his ear. In June 1983, at age 40, during the filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in London, he herniated a disc in his back, forcing him to fly back to Los Angeles for an operation. He returned six weeks later.
Since 1992, Ford has lent his voice to a series of public service messages promoting environmental involvement for EarthShare, an American federation of environmental and conservation charities.
On September 7, 1995, Ford testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of the Dalai Lama and an independent Tibet, and was banned thereafter by the Chinese government from entering Tibet and China. In 2008, he narrated the documentary Dalai Lama Renaissance.
In 2003, he publicly condemned the Iraq War and called for "regime change" in the United States. He also criticized Hollywood for making violent movies, and called for more gun control in the United States. He opposed the recall of Californian Governor Gray Davis, and stated in an interview that replacing Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger would be a mistake.
Ford began flight training in the 1960s at Wild Rose Airport in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, flying in a Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer, but at $15 an hour he was unable to continue the training. His interest returned in the mid-1990s when he bought a used Gulfstream II and asked one of his pilots, Terry Bender, to give him flying lessons. They started flying a Cessna 182 out of Jackson, Wyoming. He later switched to Teterboro, New Jersey, flying a Cessna 206, the aircraft he soloed in.
On October 23, 1999, Harrison Ford was involved in the crash of a Bell 206L4 LongRanger helicopter (N36R). The NTSB accident report states that Ford was piloting the aircraft over the Lake Piru riverbed near Santa Clarita, California, on a routine training flight. While making his second attempt at an autorotation with powered recovery Ford allowed the aircraft's altitude to drop to 150–200 feet before beginning power up. As a result the aircraft was unable to recover power before hitting the ground. The aircraft landed hard and began skidding forward in the loose gravel before one of its skids struck a partially embedded log and flipped onto its side. Neither Ford nor the instructor pilot suffered any injuries though the helicopter was seriously damaged. When asked about the incident by fellow pilot James Lipton in an interview on the TV show Inside the Actor's Studio Ford replied "I broke it."
Ford keeps his aircraft at Santa Monica Airport, though the Bell 407 is often kept and flown in Jackson, Wyoming, and has been used by the actor in two mountain rescues during the actor's assigned duty time assisting the Teton County Search and Rescue. On one of the rescues Ford recovered a hiker who had become lost and disoriented. She boarded Ford's Bell 407 and promptly vomited into one of the rescuers' caps (she says it was not Ford's cap), unaware of who the pilot was until much later, saying, "I can't believe I barfed in Harrison Ford's helicopter!"
Ford flies his de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (N28S) more than any of his other aircraft, and although he dislikes showing favoritism, he has repeatedly stated that he likes this aircraft and the sound of its Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial engine. Ford first encountered the Beaver while filming Six Days Seven Nights, and soon purchased one. Kenmore Air in Kenmore, Washington, restored Ford's yellow and green Beaver — a junked former U.S. military aircraft — with updated avionics and an upgraded engine. According to Ford, it had been flown in the CIA's Air America operations, and was riddled with bullet holes, which had to be patched up. He uses it regularly for impromptu fly-ins at remote airports and bush strips, as well as gatherings with other Beaver owners and pilots.
In March 2004, Ford officially became chairman of the Young Eagles program of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Ford was asked to take the position by Greg Anderson, Senior Vice President of the EAA at the time, to replace General Charles "Chuck" Yeager who was vacating the post that he had held for many years. Ford at first was hesitant, but later accepted the offer and has made appearances with the Young Eagles at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh gathering at Oshkosh, Wisconsin for two years. In July 2005 at the gathering in Oshkosh Ford agreed to accept the position for another two years. Ford has flown over 280 children as part of the Young Eagles program, usually in his DHC-2 Beaver, which can seat the actor and five children. Ford is involved with the EAA chapter in Driggs, Idaho, just over the mountains from Jackson, Wyoming.
As of 2009, Ford appears in Web advertisements for General Aviation Serves America, a campaign by advocacy group AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association).
Ford is an Honorary Board Member of the humanitarian aviation organization Wings of Hope.
He has also flown as an invited VIP with the Blue Angels.
;Interviews
Category:Actors from California Category:Actors from Chicago, Illinois Category:American aviators Category:American conservationists Category:American actors of Russian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:California Democrats Category:Jewish actors Category:Living people Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Personae non gratae Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:1942 births
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| Name | George Lucas |
|---|---|
| Caption | Lucas in 2009 |
| Birth date | May 14, 1944 |
| Birth place | Modesto, California, USA |
| Birth name | George Walton Lucas, Jr. |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Occupation | Film director, producer, screenwriter |
| Spouse | Marcia Lucas, Griffin (1969–1983) |
| Partner | Mellody Hobson (2007–present) |
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director and founder/chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd. He is best known for being the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Today, Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful independent directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion as of 2010.
Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film , as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from Brookdale Community College in New Jersey.
As a child, Lucas never learned to swim, which became a source of embarrassment and frustration as he became older. Lucas has expressed in several interviews that his inability to swim was "the passion that drove me to succeed in filmmaking... (It) gave me the chip on my shoulder that I think was critical to my later success"
During this time, an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Baillie tacked up a bedsheet in his backyard in 1960 to screen the work of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers like Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage and Bruce Conner. For the next few years, Baillie's series, dubbed Canyon Cinema, toured local coffeehouses. These events became a magnet for the teenage Lucas and his boyhood friend John Plummer. The 19-year-olds began slipping away to San Francisco to hang out in jazz clubs and find news of Canyon Cinema screenings in flyers at the City Lights bookstore. Already a promising photographer, Lucas became infatuated with these abstract films.
"That's when he (George) really started exploring" Plummer recalled. "We went to a theater on Union Street that shows art movies, we drove up to San Francisco State for a film festival, and there was an old beatnik coffeehouse in Cow Hollow with shorts that were really out there." It was a season of awakening for Lucas, who had been an uninterested slacker in high school. At an autocross track, Lucas met his first mentor in the film industry — famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, a fellow aficionado of sleek racing machines. Wexler was impressed by the way the shy teenager handled a camera, cradling it low on his hips to get better angles. "George had a very good eye, and he thought visually," Wexler recalls.
Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.
Lucas saw many inspiring movies in class, particularly the visual films coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett's 21-87, the French-Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles, the work of Norman McLaren, and the documentaries of Claude Jutra. Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, , The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town, Filmmaker, and 6-18-67. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.
On a return-on-investment basis, Star Wars proved to be one of the most successful films of all time . During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights (for novelizations, T-shirts, toys, etc.) —rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless . This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars , as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. This accumulated capital enabled him to finance the sequel himself.
Over the two decades after the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and/or producer, including the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, TV, and other media. He acted as Executive Producer for the next two Star Wars films, assigning the direction of (1980) to Irvin Kershner and (1983) to Richard Marquand, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. Lucas also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films. Other notable projects as a producer or executive producer in this period include Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat (1981), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986), Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi (1986) and the animated film The Land Before Time (1988). There were also some less successful projects, however, including More American Graffiti (1979), the ill-fated Howard the Duck (1986), which was arguably the biggest flop of his career; Willow (1988, which Lucas also wrote); and Coppola's (1988). Between 1992 and 1996, Lucas served as executive producer for the television spinoff The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In 1997, for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas went back to his trilogy to enhance and add certain scenes using newly available digital technology. These new versions were released in theaters as the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. For DVD releases in 2004, this series has received further revisions to make them congruent with the prequel trilogy. Besides the additions to the Star Wars franchise, Lucas released Special Edition director's cuts of THX 1138 and American Graffiti containing a number of CGI revisions.
The animation studio Pixar was founded as the Graphics Group , one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes,.
In 2008, he reteamed with Steven Spielberg for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Lucas currently serves as executive producer for , an animated television series on Cartoon Network, which was preceded by a . He is also working on a so-far untitled Star Wars live-action series.
For the film Red Tails (2010), Lucas serves as story-writer and executive producer. He also took over direction of reshoots while director Anthony Hemingway worked on other projects. Lucas is working on his first musical, an untitled CGI project being produced at Skywalker Ranch. Kevin Munroe is directing and David Berenbaum wrote the screenplay.
The American Film Institute awarded Lucas its Life Achievement Award on June 9, 2005. This was shortly after the release of , about which he joked stating that, since he views the entire Star Wars series as one movie, he could actually receive the award now that he had finally "gone back and finished the movie."
On June 5, 2005, Lucas was named among the 100 "Greatest Americans" by the Discovery Channel.
Lucas was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Directing and Writing for American Graffiti, and Best Directing and Writing for Star Wars. He received the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1991. He appeared at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony in 2007 with Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola to present the Best Director award to their friend Martin Scorsese. During the speech, Spielberg and Coppola talked about the joy of winning an Oscar, making fun of Lucas, who has not won a competitive Oscar.
In 2005, Lucas gave US$1 million to help build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to commemorate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. On September 19, 2006, USC announced that George Lucas had donated $175–180 million to his alma mater to expand the film school. It is the largest single donation to USC and the largest gift to a film school anywhere. Previous donations led to the already existing George Lucas Instructional Building and Marcia Lucas Post-Production building.
On January 1, 2007 George Lucas served as the Grand Marshal for the 2007 Tournament of Roses Parade, and made the coin toss at the 2007 Rose Bowl.
On August 25, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced that Lucas would be one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in The California Museum's yearlong exhibit. The induction ceremony was on December 1, 2009 in Sacramento, California.
On September 6, 2009, Lucas was in Venice to present to the Pixar team the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement during the 2009 Biennale Venice Film Festival.
Lucas was born and raised in a strong Methodist family. The religious and mythical themes in Star Wars were inspired by Lucas' interest in the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell, and he would eventually come to identify strongly with the Eastern religious philosophies he studied and incorporated into his movies, which were a major inspiration for "the Force." Lucas eventually came to state that his religion was "Buddhist Methodist". Lucas resides in Marin County. Lucas has said that he is a fan of Seth MacFarlane's hit TV show Family Guy. MacFarlane has said that Lucasfilm was extremely helpful when the Family Guy crew wanted to parody their works.
Lucas has pledged to give half of his fortune to charity as part of an effort called The Giving Pledge led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to persuade America's richest individuals to donate their financial wealth to charities.
Category:1944 births Category:American billionaires Category:American Buddhists Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American Cinema Editors Category:American Methodists Category:American voice actors Category:Film theorists Category:Indiana Jones Category:Mythopoeic writers Category:People from Marin County, California Category:People from Modesto, California Category:Science fiction fans Category:Science Fiction Hall of Fame Category:American science fiction writers Category:University of Southern California alumni Category:Living people Category:Star Wars Category:American screenwriters Category:American film editors Category:American film actors Category:American cinematographers Category:Special effects people
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![GEORGE LUCAS ,THE FILM´S CREATOR, [LEFT] AND MARK HAMILL WHO PLAYED LUKE SKYWALKER AT THE LONDON PREMIERE OF THE FILM ´STAR WARS´ (AP Photo/Tim Graham Picture Library)](http://web.archive.org./web/20110319172215im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/35/4c/3a153a814ab4c6d8daf3c3af087b_grande.jpg "GEORGE LUCAS ,THE FILM´S CREATOR, [LEFT] AND MARK HAMILL WHO PLAYED LUKE SKYWALKER AT THE LONDON PREMIERE OF THE FILM ´STAR WARS´ (AP Photo/Tim Graham Picture Library)")
![GEORGE LUCAS ,THE FILM´S CREATOR, [LEFT] AND MARK HAMILL WHO PLAYED LUKE SKYWALKER AT THE LONDON PREMIERE OF THE FILM ´STAR WARS´ (AP Photo/Tim Graham Picture Library)](http://web.archive.org./web/20110319172215im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/35/4c/3a153a814ab4c6d8daf3c3af087b_thumb.jpg "GEORGE LUCAS ,THE FILM´S CREATOR, [LEFT] AND MARK HAMILL WHO PLAYED LUKE SKYWALKER AT THE LONDON PREMIERE OF THE FILM ´STAR WARS´ (AP Photo/Tim Graham Picture Library)")
