You probably know Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, the nightmare himself, the guy who haunted everyone’s dreams in the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. But before the glove, the burns, and the one-liners… Englund almost ended up piloting the Millennium Falcon.
Yeah, Robert Englund was once in the running to play Han Solo.
Back in the mid-1970s, Englund was still a struggling actor living in Hollywood with his buddy Mark Hamill. One day, he went out to audition for a role in Apocalypse Now, which, funny enough, was being cast at the same time as Star Wars.
As Englund later told it in an interview with Force Material, “I auditioned for the surfer in Apocalypse Now, and I was too old. I really thought I was going to nail it.” But then, just as he was leaving, someone mentioned that another project was casting down the hall, something from a young filmmaker named George Lucas.
“I perked right up when I heard George Lucas,” Englund said. “I loved American Graffiti. It was the perfect movie about my generation. So my eyes lit up and I went across the hall.”
What he found there was early casting for Star Wars. At the time, Lucas and the team were looking for an older Han Solo, “like a cool uncle who just comes around once a year,” as Englund put it. “They wanted him to be that guy who smokes a joint with Luke and tells him about the old days.”
Englund said they took a few quick Polaroids of him, chatted for a bit, and that was it. “I could tell I was too young,” he said. “But I like to joke that I helped launch Luke Skywalker’s career, so I guess that makes me a small part of Star Wars history.”
After the audition, Englund went home to his apartment in the Hollywood Hills, where his roommate Mark Hamill was, as he described it, “halfway through a six-pack, watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
At that time, Hamill was working on a short-lived sitcom called The Texas Wheelers across the street, and Englund always knew when his friend was home because “his cowboy boots were sitting outside the door.”
“So I walk in,” Englund said, “and I tell Mark, ‘Hey, they’re casting this new George Lucas movie called Star Wars. You should go read for it — the character’s like a space prince, totally you.’”
Englund likes to joke about how the internet keeps twisting the story:
“That’s the true story. But people online make it sound like I turned down Luke Skywalker for Mark Hamill, I would never have turned it down!”