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Dave Prowse, the British weightlifter-turned-actor who played Darth Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, has passed away at the age of 85.
Prowse died Saturday after a brief illness, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday.
Born in Bristol, in south-west England, in 1935, Prowse represented England in weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games in the 1950s before breaking into movies with roles that emphasized his imposing size, including Frankenstein in a couple of films Horror.
Director George Lucas saw Prowse in a small role in “A Clockwork Orange” and asked the 6-foot-6-inch actor to audition for the villain Vader or Chewbacca in “Star Wars.”
The actor: “You always remember the bad guys”
Prowse later told the BBC that he chose Darth Vader because “you always remember the bad guys.”
Physically, Prowse was perfect for the role. His sung English accent was deemed less than ideal, and his lines were dubbed by James Earl Jones.
“Ant-Man” director Edgar Wright paid tribute to Prowse on Twitter.
“As a kid Dave Prowse couldn’t be more famous to me; stalking the halls as the embodiment of evil in the role of Darth Vader and preventing a whole generation of children from being shot down in the street as the man from the Code of the Green Cross, ”he wrote. “Rest in peace, the best of Bristol.”
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