Mark Hamill has long been a critic of President Donald Trump. So much so, he, like many others, considered moving abroad permanently following Trump’s reelection. Following the November 2024 results, the actor asked his wife to choose between London and Ireland, he told The Times of London in a recent interview.
His wife reframed the conversation, which made him want to stay and fight for the time being. “She’s very clever. She didn’t respond right away but a week later she said, ‘I’m surprised you would allow him to force you out of your own country.’ That son of a bitch, I thought. I’m not leaving.”
During the interview, the lifelong Democrat pointed out how Trump’s policies against immigrants have been “brutalising” Los Angelenos. “A few weeks ago ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents were pulling people out of their cars,” he said while discussing The Long Walk, an adaptation of Stephen King’s dystopian horror tome in which the U.S. is ruled by a totalitarian regime; Hamill portrays a fascist leader in a post-apocalyptic America. “They wore masks and had no identification to show they were law enforcement. They were just brutalising people, kneeling on their necks. When I made the movie I wasn’t thinking in terms of it being timely but it’s proven to be just that.”
He added of Trump: “The bullying, the incompetence, the people in place… The only way I can deal with it without going crazy and wanting to open my veins in a warm tub is to look at it like a thick, sprawling political novel,” he said. “It’s entertaining in a way because this could actually be the end. Our status in the world has been crippled and that will reverberate for decades. Making Canada a 51st state? Do you know how offensive that is? And then taking over Greenland and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. The distractions are hilarious.”
Hamill is not the only actor to be critical of Trump that looked to other countries as havens following his reelection. In July, Trump threatened to revoke Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship, calling her a “threat to humanity.” The American-born actress, who currently resides in Ireland and is a longtime Trump critic, fired back: “You call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear: a loud woman, a queer woman, a mother who tells the truth, an American who got out of the country b4 u set it ablaze.”
Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel said he obtained Italian citizenship. “I did get Italian citizenship,” he said on The Sarah Silverman podcast, noting, “What’s going on [with Trump] is as bad as you thought it was gonna be. It’s so much worse; it’s just unbelievable. I feel like it’s probably even worse than he would like it to be.”
From Rolling Stone US
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