Rest in peace —
George Lucas dubbed in James Earl Jones to provide Vader’s voice.
Timothy B. Lee
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David Prowse as Darth Vader and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia filming the original Star Wars.
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesDavid Prowse lifting weights in 1962 at the age of 27.
David Prowse plays a muscular bodyguard in the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange.
Warner Bros./Archive Photos/Getty ImagesProwse’s heavily made-up face appears on a 1974 poster for Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell.
LMPC via Getty ImagesProwse with Fisher, Peter Cushing, and Director George Lucas on the set of the original Star Wars.
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty ImagesDave Prowse as the Green Cross Man for a road safety campaign aimed at children and promoting ‘The Green Cross Code,’ 1977.
Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesProwse as the Green Cross Code Man, with youngsters from Lambeth Johanna Primary School in London.
PA Images via Getty ImagesProwse at a 1999 collectibles exhibition in London.
PA Images via Getty Images
David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the first three Star Wars films, has died at the age of 85. Prowse’s agent confirmed the news to the Hollywood Reporter on Saturday evening.
Prowse was a body builder who stood six feet, seven inches tall when he won the Vader role for the original 1977 Star Wars. Prowse also played Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
In a 2016 interview, Prowse said that George Lucas offered him a choice between playing Darth Vader or Chewbacca. Prowse chose Vader, and the Chewbacca role went to Peter Mayhew, who died last year.
But while Prowse supplied Vader’s body, George Lucas decided not to use the Brit’s voice. He dubbed in lines by the baritone James Earl Jones instead.
When Darth Vader next appeared in a Star Wars feature film, in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, he was played by Hayden Christensen, the actor who played Annakin Skywalker in the prequels.
The Hollywood Reporter described Prowse’s early life:
Born on July 1, 1935, in Bristol, England, Prowse was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis of the knee and forced to wear a leg splint for four years as a youngster (it turned out he actually had osteoarthritis). Yet he went on to compete for the Mr. Universe bodybuilding title in 1960 before capturing the British weightlifting championship three straight years running, from 1962-64. (At age 50, he was still able to dead-lift 700 pounds.)
Prowse played a bodyguard in the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. He also appeared in a number of lesser-known films. He played Frankenstein’s Monster in three different films in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Around the same time, he became known in the UK for playing “Green Cross Code Man” in traffic safety commercials.
Prowse’s agent told CNN that he died after a short illness. Prowse had previously been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Listing image by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images