Mark Hamill Had A Crash Course In Scuba Diving For Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Actors get to try a little bit of everything but this seems to be the month of submerging those scamps. James Cameron, however, does not own the market on professional-grade dunk tanks (even if he's tried really, really hard). Much like how nearly every videogame features the requisite water level, a significant chunk of Hollywood finds itself clocking in a few hours beneath the waves. "Harry Potter" did it at least twice, "Mission Possible" did it in "Rogue Nation," and even "The Shape of Water" gave it a go, albeit for very different reasons.
Turning the clock back to a long, long time ago, George Lucas required his performers to spend a surprising amount of time subaquatic for "Star Wars," a series of films that primarily take place in the farthest reaches of empty space. The only trouble is that, at least as far as the original trilogy goes, Mark Hamill, aka Luke Freakin' Skywalker, had never scuba-dived before. Now, that obviously had to change because shoving an actor into the ocean without some form of accreditation is arguably the most illegal thing. Fortunately, the event was so odd that Hamill left with a story to share all these years later.
Learning under pressure
In a 2020 interview with Starwars.com, as part of the 40th anniversary of "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back," Mark Hamill shared an anecdote about his first scuba diving experience, one that the "Star Wars" creative team insisted upon in preparation for "The Empire Strikes Back." Hamill said:
"They took me to a private school that had a big enough swimming pool because I had never been scuba diving before. And I said to them, 'well I don't think it's any big deal. I'll just breathe through the tank. What's the big whoop about that?' And they said, 'well, you'd better try it.' So, I went to an all-girls school and they had the swimming pool closed as I had my lessons, but I remember, at one point, looking up and on the second floor balcony there were, I don't know, 50 girls all up there giggling and pointing and laughing, so that was interesting."
Hamill went on to say that his he preferred filming underwater stunts at Elstree Studios — a bygone filming studio that George Lucas utilized for his original trilogy — rather than filming underwater stunts on location, as the studio was able to heat the water to a soothing, survivable temperature. It probably didn't hurt that the studio didn't include a hoard of small, giggling children, either.