Mark Hamill Confirms His Hilarious Line In First Star Wars Movie Was Ad-Libbed

A New Hope, as the first movie that started the Star Wars craze, had many memorable moments that fans continue to quote and recall to this day, but over the years, we’ve learned that the cast improvised many of these scenes.

From Harrison Ford’s improvised “I know” moment in The Empire Strikes Back to Carrie Fisher’s emotional “I changed my hair” line in The Last Jedi, the world of that galaxy far, far away is full of intimate moments that weren’t originally in the scripts. And apparently, the rumor that one of Mark Hamill’s line in A New Hope was ad-libbed as well is actually true.

In the first movie, when Han and Luke put on the stormtrooper outfits to infiltrate the Death Star and rescue Princess Leia, Luke’s “‘I can’t see a thing in this helmet” was actually Hamill talking to Harrison when he thought the cameras had stopped rolling.

Recently, a fan reached out to Hamill on Twitter to ask if that factoid is valid and here’s what the legendary actor had to say:

“It was not scripted, but I said it when I knew the cameras were rolling. I knew it didn’t matter because I had the helmet on & no one could see my face anyway. Everyone liked it, so George let me keep the line in subsequent takes,” He wrote.

So, it looks as though the reality of the situation was somewhat different from what we’ve heard before. But George Lucas keeping Mark’s ad-lib in is interesting in and of itself since we know the director didn’t appreciate the actors deviating from the script all that much.

We’re glad that he did, though, otherwise, we wouldn’t have this golden moment from the first movie. And what’s that if not utterly tragic, as I’m sure all Star Wars fans would agree?