Mark Hamill is an actor who is not only talented, but remarkably versatile. While the performer broke out as Luke Skywalker in George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in 1977, he soon proved that he wasn’t only adept at playing wide-eyed, swashbuckling heroes. Hamill’s acting career has included live-action TV, a variety of video game roles, and an intimidatingly large amount of voice work for animation.
Arguably the most fascinating era of his acting career was during the 1990s, when Hamill got to delve into roles that were nothing like Luke. In addition to playing the Joker on “Batman: The Animated Series” (an iconic role that had been given an unofficial test run in live action in the 1990 “The Flash” series), Hamill was appearing before the cameras in a number of horror films. He starred in a feature for Screaming Mad George and Steve Wang called “The Guyver,” Tobe Hooper’s short segment for John Carpenter’s “Body Bags,” and Carpenter’s remake of “Village of the Damned.”
Amidst all this, Hamill also appeared in a small cameo role in 1992’s “Sleepwalkers,” written by Stephen King and directed by Mick Garris. Even though Hamill was a late addition to the movie, his presence is a welcome one; he plays a police officer in an opening scene meant to help establish the murder methods of the titular cat-vampires.
Here in 2025, Hamill is one of the stars of no less than two King film adaptations. He played Albie Krantz in “The Life of Chuck,” and this weekend he is the mysterious, ominous Major in “The Long Walk.” While Hamill appearing in films from King’s work seems like a homecoming of sorts, it’s apparently news to Hamill that he was ever in “Sleepwalkers.” When the part was brought up to Hamill during a recent interview, the actor admits he forgot about the whole thing, which says a lot about just how extensive and prolific his body of work really is.
Hamill appeared in Sleepwalkers both as a favor to Garris and because he’s a King fan
To be fair, Hamill’s Sheriff Jenkins only appears in the opening scene of “Sleepwalkers.” Given that, plus Hamill’s extensive list of credits, it makes sense that it might’ve slipped his mind. However, when Hamill was reminded of the appearance while speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he instantly recalled the circumstances under which he got the gig:
“I totally forgot. If I remember right, Mick Garris, the director, asked me, ‘Could I do a small role?’ I loved him so much, and I thought, ‘I’ve gotta do it to help him.’ I don’t even know if I got paid, but I totally forgot about it. If there’s not a premiere of a movie, sometimes they’ll slip through, and I don’t see ’em. I think I eventually saw it, but it was so long ago, I can’t remember much of it … I don’t remember the plot; I don’t remember who I played. I should probably look it up.”
Despite his forgetting about it, Hamill is very enjoyable in the small role, and his stern presence in the scene lends a lot of weight to the insidious threat posed by the Sleepwalkers during the film. In fact, there’s an appreciable similarity between Jenkins’ serious demeanor and Hamill’s unfeeling stoneface in “The Long Walk.” Hamill didn’t just take the role in “Sleepwalkers” solely because he was a fan of Garris’ work, however. He’d also already been a longtime fan of Stephen King, thanks to a memorable experience seeing Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “The Shining” (which King himself famously dislikes). As Hamill recalled:
“I’ve always been a Stephen King fan, and if it came out after ‘The Shining,’ because that’s one of the first [King] things I ever saw. I remember I saw it in Westwood, the very first week it opened. I walked directly from the theater to a bookstore and went home to read, ‘What the hell did I just see?’“
As it turns out, there’s a little bit of a mutual admiration society between King and Hamill, too. King confessed in 2022 to loving the 2019 “Child’s Play” remake, which featured Hamill as the voice of that film’s killer AI doll, Chucky.
Sleepwalkers is stuffed with cameo appearances
Hamill’s turn in “Sleepwalkers” isn’t just a standalone bit of trivia. It so happens that Hamill represents the first of numerous cameo appearances in the film. Ironically, all of these cameos besides Hamill’s are other film directors. There’s John Landis, Joe Dante, Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, and Stephen King himself. The latter three not only all appear in the same scene, but in the same shot, too. As Mick Garris told /Film in 2017, this shot featuring King, Hooper, and Barker came together super quickly:
“You know, that day that we had King come in to do his cameo with Clive Barker and Tobe Hooper was kind of an amazing day. We’re on location, I’ve never met King before in person, and we’re having our morning breakfast going, ‘King’s gonna be here soon! He can only be here for a couple of hours!’ … And then I broke my tooth on my morning granola. While we were all having breakfast before. I had to get rushed down to my dentist and get an emergency crown put on. ‘Faster, faster, Stephen King is coming!’ Getting there, we had two hours to shoot the scene. It’s all in one camera set up. If you took that scene and clipped it off right before the cop starts talking to Tanya, you’d never miss it for a moment. But for horror geeks like myself, it’s like an orgasm.”
Although “Sleepwalkers” is not in the upper echelons of the King-on-screen canon, it’s notable for several reasons, not least of which is that it’s the only movie to date that King has written directly for the screen, rather than one wholly or partially adapted from a novel or short story of his. Another reason it deserves to be remembered is for these cameo appearances, which are indeed very fun and add a good deal to the atmosphere of the film. While Hamill has now been reminded of his first collaboration with King, the strength of his performances in “The Life of Chuck” and “The Long Walk” seem to promise that this is a relationship which should (and hopefully will) continue.
