Mark Hamill remembers ‘Star Wars’ co-star Peter Cushing fondly

While he may have played a villain on screen, actor Mark Hamill is fondly remembering his experiences interacting with the late Peter Cushing from the time they overlapped on the set of Star Wars.

In the original 1977 film, Cushing played Grand Moff Tarkin, a high-ranking official in the evil Galactic Empire who, alongside Darth Vader, represented one of the main antagonists in the movie.

Hamill, who played the lead role of Luke Skywalker in the timeless hero’s journey tale, took to Twitter Tuesday to express his accolades for Cushing as one of the “kindest” and “considerate” gentleman he’s ever met, despite playing “one of the most heartless” and “evil villains in the galaxy.”

You can check the tweet out for yourself right here, in which Cushing and Hamill exchange a warm smile with each other in a vintage photograph that appears to be from the set of the movie.

Though Cushing, who died in 1994, rose to worldwide prominence in his iconic Star Wars role, he was already a fairly well-known and lauded actor by the time he donned the Galactic Empire’s war medals.

Having appeared in over 100 movies over a span of six decades, Cushing gained recognition in his home country of England by starring in a number of leading roles in the Hammer Productions horror films from the 1950s-1970s, including playing Victor Frankenstein in The Revenge of Frankenstein, for instance.

Cushing’s likeness was later recreated with computer graphics in the Star Wars prequel Rogue One in 2016, a process you can learn more about in this article.