Dave Prowse, actor who played Darth Vader, dies at 85

Dave Prowse, the British weightlifter-turned-actor who played Darth Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, has passed away. He was 85 years old.

Prowse died Saturday after a brief illness, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday.

Born in Bristol, in the south west of 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 the monster of Frankenstein in a couple of horror movies.

Director George Lucas saw Prowse in a small role in “A Clockwork Orange” and asked the 6-foot-6-inch (2-meter) actor to audition for the villain Vader or the Wookiee Chewbacca in “Star Wars.”

Later, Prowse told the BBC that he chose Darth Vader because “you always remember the bad guys.”

Physically, Prowse was perfect for the role. His sung West Country English accent was deemed less ideal and his lines were dubbed by James Earl Jones.

Prowse was also known to a generation of British children as the Green Cross Code Man, a superhero in a series of road safety advertisements.

“Ant-Man” director Edgar Wright paid tribute to Prowse on Twitter.

“As a kid, Dave Prowse couldn’t be more famous to me; lurking through the halls as the embodiment of evil in the role of Darth Vader and preventing a whole generation of kids from being shot down in the street as the man from the Code of the City. Cruz Verde, “he wrote. . “Rest in peace, the best in Bristol.”