‘Star Wars’ Gave Joel Edgerton the Ability to Bluff His Way Into Movies
Star Wars helped propel the careers of many actors, including Joel Edgerton. After doing the prequel films, Edgerton quickly realized he could use his ties to the franchise as a bargaining tool for movies.
How ‘Star Wars’ changed Joel Edgerton’s career
Edgerton has been very candid about his appreciation for Star Wars creator George Lucas. He had a few credits to his name as an actor, but Attack of the Clones was really Edgerton’s first major film role. He was cast as Luke Skywalker’s uncle Owen Lars. And although the part was small, it paid off in a big way.
“It totally was [like hitting jackpot], as miniscule as my part was in Star Wars. I couldn’t believe that they were shooting in Australia, that I was an actor of the right age to play a young Uncle Owen. It was my 26th birthday when I found out I got the job. I was so f***ing over the moon. And then it gave me the opportunity to go to the States,” he once told Games Radar.
Afterwards, his inclusion in Star Wars became a sort of bargaining tool for Edgerton. It allowed the actor to meet for features he might not have been considered for otherwise.
“Star Wars allowed me, in that 18-month period while they were putting the movie together, to bluff my way into any meeting I wanted. ‘I’m in Star Wars. I’m not telling you that I’m only in it for five minutes and that I don’t have a lightsaber.’ I would have meetings with people, and let them believe I was a larger part of the story than I actually was. That was a good time and allowed me to get my first job out of the States,” he said.
Joel Edgerton was hesitant to reprise his role in ‘Star Wars’ for ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’
Edgerton would later revisit Owen Lars in the feature Obi Wan Kenobi. And as a much more established actor, his character would have a much meatier part than he did in the last two films. But he had some reservations about playing the role that he had to overcome.
“I was a little bit… not snobbish but reticent in regards to going, ‘I’ve done this before,’” Edgerton told The Hollywood Reporter. “I’ve always joked that Uncle Owen is the most boring character in Star Wars history because he’s a moisture farmer, and he doesn’t get to wield a lightsaber. [But] I saw it as a way to complete a circle of some kind.”
The Great Gatsby actor planned on adding more layers to Owen this time around, further endearing him to the part.
“Everybody thinks that Uncle Owen is a grumbly, cantankerous ‘say no’ dude,” Edgerton said. “I was like, ‘This is my opportunity to put a bit more context on that and have people maybe like him a little bit more.’ And I think we did that.”
But Edgerton did have one major condition he needed met before committing to the project.
“My one caveat to them was, ‘I know what you’re planning with the story and how it unfolds, and I’m not asking for more screen time, I just want to do something cool,’” Edgeron recalled. “’Can I at least have one fight? Can I at least throw my hessian sleeves up and get into one brawl?’”
Joel Edgerton had his own ideas about his ‘Star Wars’ character before ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’
Even a few years before the Disney + show, Edgerton asserted that there were certain things about Owen Lars he would’ve liked to explore. Given that Owen had such limited appearances in the movies, Edgerton had his own ideas for adding depth to his character.
“My idea is that he could go out and have some adventure and then he comes back and slips back into that unassuming moisture farmer role,” Edgerton once told Business Insider. “Everyone talks about Obi-Wan being super cool, Owen secretly knows that he was there, and he did some of the cool s***, too.”
