Mark Hamill’s New Job: Would You Like Fries With That?

What are the chances of a former employee who let you go asking you to come back?” Mark Hamill says of his new campaign with Jack in the Box. That’s right, my friends; not only are they bringing back spicy chicken strike and French toast sticks but “for a limited time,” your Jack in the Box order could be taken by none other than Mark Hamill himself. 

Hamill sat down with PEOPLE magazine to explain that Jack in the Box was his very first job, and it didn’t work out so well: 

“I always aspired to work the window, right? I wanted to be on the speaker, and instead I was always in the back. And when I got my chance at it, I blew it,” the 70-year-old Star Wars actor said. It’s hard to imagine Mark Hamill (who played Luke Skywalker in the most successful sci-fi franchise of all time) blowing it, but he explained that when his big shot at the window came, he got a bit too creative. He told  PEOPLE that he used a clown voice to say, “Welcome to Jack in the Box. May I take your order?”

That didn’t go over too well with his boss, it seems. “Well, I thought it was clever. The manager thought otherwise,” he laughs. “I was probably really irritating. Anyway, he just told me to go home and never come back.”

He was 18 at the time and said there were no hard feelings. Instead, he used it as a springboard to find new opportunities and never let rejection taint his outlook. 

No matter what job he had, he said he always saw the theatrical aspect of it. “I wouldn’t be just a waiter,” Hamill explained.  “In my mind, I would be somebody I’d seen in the movies. It was sort of like using your fantasy imagination to make the job more fun. And that’s what I did at Jack in the Box — although it didn’t come to a happy end,” he says.

Now, however, that’s all water under the bridge as he finally has a shot to redeem himself through his promotion with the fast food chain that once rejected him. Hopefully this time around goes better than the last. May the Force be with him.