10 Things You Didn't Know About Mark Hamill

3. He Was In A Car Crash

In December 1976, Mark Hamill, in his own words, failed "to negotiate an off-ramp, and lost control, tumbled over, and went off the road". Much has been made of this now legendary accident. Accounts vary. 

One version is that he crashed his Corvette, and they had to use part of his ear to rebuild his nose and cheekbone, but as he himself states, "I broke my nose. That's it!" Apparently the surgery lasted 7 hours. Another story states that because of the injuries, it altered Star Wars plot lines somewhat, and the Wampa attack on Luke at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back, was written in to explain the scars on Luke's face. If that were true however, then he crashed the car after they started filming the sequel, which is at odds with the timeline. Yet another story goes that Mark wasn't even driving a Corvette, and it was a BMW that was crashed. One story even says that he crashed his car just before filming wrapped on A New Hope, and the pick-up shots of Luke in his Landspeeder are in fact, of a stunt man in Hamill's place.

Hamill stated in an interview many years back that the crash was in a BMW, on January 11th 1977. He fractured his cheekbone and nose, and there ends the mystery.