(CNN) – Mark Hamill can’t imagine what life would have been like without “Star Wars.”
“You know, I heard someone ask George Harrison years after the Beatles broke up, ‘What was it like being in the Beatles?’ and he said, ‘What was it like not being in the Beatles?’ That’s all he knew, and I totally relate to that,” Hamill told CNN at the Tony Awards on Sunday night. “I’m not trying to compare myself to the Beatles in any way, but in terms of being swept up in it and being such a part of the fabric of your life, I don’t know. I can’t imagine [my life] without it.”
Hamill’s favorite film in the “Star Wars” franchise is “The Empire Strikes Back.”
“In ‘Star Wars,’ before we knew we could make sequels, you had to tie it up neatly at the end and everybody is happy,” Hamill said. “And act two, like in any three act play, terrible things happen to the protagonists. There’s terrible setbacks and twists and revelations. It had a spiritual, cerebral element to it that the earlier film didn’t. Because of Yoda, because of an amazing twist ending, I think I favor that one.”
Hamill said he is still in disbelief over the death of his longtime friend and “Star Wars” co-star, Carrie Fisher.
“It’s hard to think of her in the past tense because everything about her was larger than life,” Hamill said. “Her humor, her sort of acerbic wit, just everything about her. She was fun to be around, and I’m sort of mad. Normally her timing was exquisite.”
The two had begun filming “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” together before her death in December. The film is set to release next winter.
“She’s wonderful in ‘The Last Jedi,’ her death certainly threw a monkey wrench into [production] because she was pivotal in Colin Trevorrow’s Episode 9,” Hamill said. “We’ll just have to see what they do.”
