Joel Edgerton (Star Wars, Warrior) recently opened up on how his career has been shaped due to being cast as Owen Lars back in George Lucas‘ 2002 movie Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, despite the movie receiving an intensely large amount of negative responses from both fans and critics alike.
While talking to NME about his new movie Master Gardener, Edgerton got to reflect on how Star Wars and George Lucas helped shape his entire career, saying that “it [STAR WARS] opened all the doors to Hollywood. It allowed everyone in L.A. to kind of welcome me and go, ‘Oh, he’s in Star Wars. Let’s give him an audition for other things’.”
Joel Edgerton On His Star Wars Character
Fans of the franchise will remember Edgerton’s return to the Star Wars universe, as he reprised the role of Owen Lars in the Ewan McGregor-led Obi-Wan Kenobi series, the uncle and father figure to the iconic Luke Skywalker.
However, returning to play the character came with doubts that people would find him interesting, as he called Owen Lars the “most boring character in Star Wars history”.
“To be honest, I was a little bit… not snobbish, but reticent in regards to going, ‘I’ve done this before’. 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. And I’m always cheeky about the way I talk about Uncle Owen!”
Joel Edgerton via NME
Despite Edgerton’s opinion of his “boring” Star Wars character, he decided to return to change both his personal opinion and the opinion of the general fanbase, as he told NME:
“Everybody thinks that Uncle Owen is a grumbly, cantankerous ‘say no’ dude. 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.”
It’s safe to say that Owen Lars has gained some favourable reputation points within the Star Wars fandom, both old and new, as he and the writing team delivered a much more in-depth and emotionally-connective version of Owen Lars than seen in any previous appearance of the character throughout the entire Star Wars saga.
Source: NME
