‘Star Wars’: Insurers Didn’t Let Mark Hamill Perform ‘Empire’ Cloud City Stunt

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Via Hollywoodreporter.com:

Obi-Wan warned Luke Skywalker that if he faced Darth Vader too soon, he would do it alone — but Luke’s stunt double still helped out anyway.On Monday, Mark Hamill posted some fun behind-the-scenes Star Wars glimpses, revealing that while he trained for a certain stunt for 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, the film’s insurers forbade the actor from performing it himself.Enter Hamill’s stunt double, Colin Skeaping, who performed the big leap out of the enormous circular window at Cloud City during the fight between Luke and Darth Vader.

“Credit where credit’s due,” Hamill tweeted to honor Skeaping, who also worked on James Bond films and 1978’s Superman. “My #ESB stunt-double COLIN SKEAPING did expert flip out window-He taught me how to do it w/ help from a springboard-Insurance guys were all ‘NOOOOO!’ “

Hamill also shared another nugget: unlike the Cloud City stunt, that actually was the actor doing that single-handed handstand in which Luke balanced Yoda on his foot while his character lifted rocks with The Force.

“Actually ME w/ no help from Colin whatsoever (but a little from a harness),” Hamill tweeted.

The social media Jedi (who has millions of followers over his platforms) also shared some pictures to go along with the tidbits.  Hamill last played Skywalker in 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Many fans and critics called it his best performance yet as the iconic sci-fi character.

And although he is not in it, Hamill has praised the latest installment in the space-adventure franchise, Solo: A Star Wars Story, which is in theaters now and tells of the early days of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, who would go on to become Cloud City’s Baron Administrator.