Stars Wars icon Mark Hamill planned to leave US after Trump’s re-election
US actor Mark Hamill and his wife Marilou York will remain in the US. (Valerie Macon / AFP/Getty Images)
US actor Mark Hamill and his wife Marilou York will remain in the US. (Valerie Macon / AFP/Getty Images)
Mark Hamill has revealed that he planned to leave the US after Donald Trump won back the White House in November.
The actor, forever linked with playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, told The Times that he was initially set to leave the US after Trump’s election victory but his wife, Marilou York, talked him into staying.
Hamill had given gave his dental hygienist wife the choice of relocating to “London or Ireland”. The couple have been married for almost 47 years.
“She’s very clever. She didn’t respond right away but a week later she said, ‘I’m surprised you would allow him to force you out of your own country’,” Hamill said. “That son of a b***h, I thought. I’m not leaving.”
‘I’m surprised you’d allow him to push you out’
However, she persuaded him to stay, saying that otherwise Trump would be pushing them out of the country.
The star, who voiced the character of King Herod, in this year’s animated version of biblical drama The King of Kings, called out “the bullying, incompetence [and] the people” in the Trump administration.
“It’s entertaining in a way because this could actually be the end,” he continued. “Our status in the world has been crippled and that will reverberate for decades. Making Canada a 51st state? Do you know how offensive that is? Then taking over Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. The distractions are hilarious.”
He holds on to the hope that good people outweigh Trump’s followers, saying: “I still believe there are more honest, decent people than there are the MAGA crowd.”
Trump’s second presidency heralded a landslide of right-wing policies, including efforts to ban transgender athletes from sports, the signing of a number of anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders and the closure of an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention hotline.
Former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who did flee the US in the wake of Trump’s return, has revealed plans for a second marriage ceremony now she and wife Portia de Rossi are settled in the UK. The couple wed in California in 2008.
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