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LONDON: Dave Prowse, the British weightlifter-turned-actor who was the body, though not the voice, of Star Wars arch-villain Darth Vader, has died aged 85.
Prowse died on Saturday (November 28) after a brief illness, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday.
Born in Bristol in south-west England in 1935, Prowse was a three-time British weightlifting champion and represented England in weightlifting at the 1962 Commonwealth Games before breaking into movies with roles that emphasized his imposing size, including the Frankenstein’s monster in a pair from Hammer Studios. horror movies.
Director George Lucas saw Prowse in a small role in A Clockwork Orange and asked the 8-foot-tall actor to audition for the villain Vader or the Wookie 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 donned Darth Vader’s black armor and helmet for Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983).
He expressed some regret that, thanks to Vader’s mask, “I can walk with total anonymity.”
“All actors yearn for recognition and I wish I had some like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo,” he told The Associated Press in 1980. “Fortune tends to follow fame.”
Prowse also worked as a coach for other actors, helping Christopher Reeve prepare to be the Man of Steel in the 1978 hit movie Superman.
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 during the 1970s and 1980s.
It was a regular at Star Wars fan events, but Lucas banned it from official conventions in 2010 after the couple broke up.
Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, tweeted that Prowse was “a kind man and much more than Darth Vader.” Hamill said the actor “loved his fans as much as they loved him. #RIP”
Ant-Man director Edgar Wright also paid tribute to Prowse on Twitter.
“As a kid Dave Prowse couldn’t be more famous to me; lurking through the halls as evil incarnated as Darth Vader and preventing a whole generation of children from being shot down in the street as the man from Green Cross Code, “he wrote. “Rest in peace, the best of Bristol.”
Prowse is survived by his wife Norma and their three children.
