Christopher Walken Recalls Star Wars Audition for Han Solo Role Opposite Jodie Foster as Princess Leia

“I did audition for ‘Star Wars’ but so did about 500 other actors,” Christopher Walken recalled

Christopher Walken is reminding fans all the ways Star Wars could have looked different.

In an interview with Vanity Fair about Walken’s new movie Dune: Part Two, the Oscar-winning actor, now 80, recalled that he auditioned to play one of the leads in George Lucas’ original space opera back in 1975, two years prior to the release of 1977’s Star Wars, also known as Episode IV: A New Hope.

“I think it was for Han Solo,” Walken said. “Yes, I auditioned for it. And if I’m not mistaken, my partner in the audition was — I think this is true — it was Jodie Foster.”

The actor recalled he and Foster “did a screen test” rather than a full scene from the movie’s script.

Foster, now 61, was just beginning to shoot to stardom as a teen in the ’70s for performances in movies like Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976), the latter of which marked her first Oscar nomination.
“Maybe we just sat in front of, in those days, those old videotape cameras,” Walken recalled to the outlet. “We might have just sat there and did the name, rank and serial number type of thing.”

Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher famously landed the lead Star Wars roles as Han Solo and Princess Leia. Combined with Mark Hamill, the trio led the original three Star Wars movies, released between 1977 and 1983. All three actors reprised their roles in the sequel films released in the 2010s, as well.

“I would say that, yes, I did audition for Star Wars, but so did about 500 other actors,” Walken said. “It was lots of people doing that.”
Foster recently mentioned she turned down an opportunity to play Princess Leia during a January appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

The star said Star Wars initially wanted a younger actress to play the role — Fisher, who died in 2016 at age 60, was roughly 20 when the movie was filmed — but it conflicted with a different film on her schedule.
“I was doing a Disney movie and I just didn’t want to pull out because I was already under contract,” she said at the time. “So I didn’t do it and, you know, they did an amazing job.”
Decades after missing on Star Wars, Walken makes his way into space-faring epics in Dune: Part Two as the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. Walken stars with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and more in the new movie, a sequel to 2021’s Dune: Part One.
Dune: Part Two is in theaters now.