Mark Hamill Recalls The Day When Alec Guinness Slapped Him on The Face

Sir Alec Guinness didn't like being called "Sir Alec" on the set of Star Wars: A New Hope. In fact, he didn't like it so much that when Mark Hamill repeatedly called him "Sir Alec", he litterally laid the smackdown on him! Hamill recalled the smackdown during an interview with Yahoo! Movies, saying:

“I kept calling him ‘Sir Alec’ over and over again. And one day he reached out … he tapped my face and then BOOM! He slapped me pretty hard. And I went ‘What was all that about?’ ‘Cause I kept calling him ‘Sir Alec.’ And he said, ‘I want to be known by my name, not my accolade.’”

Damn! Guinness may have been playing the relatively peaceful Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in the film, but the actor wasn't afraid to get a little violent in real life to get his point across. Hamill didn't take it as a sign of disrespect, though. He just kind of brushed it off.

“I thought, ‘what a classy guy. Now, what am I supposed to call him? Big Al? And I said that to him. He loves that, you know, he loves irreverent humor. And he thought Americans are, of course, very brash and sometimes have struggle with our impulse control.”

I don't know how I would've reacted being slapped in the face like that by Alec Guinness. I guess it'd be kind of an honor to feel the sting of his palm land across my face at a high velocity. I thought that was a pretty funny story.