Actor never minded being known for only one role, as Star Wars bounty hunter
Jeremy Bulloch made no bones about how he landed the best-known role of his long acting career. ‘‘The suit fit,’’ he said simply. Bulloch, who has died aged 75, was performing in repertory in southern England in 1979, when he received a call from his halfbrother Robert Watts, an associate producer on The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the Star Wars trilogy. ‘‘There’s a small part, probably a couple of days,’’ Watts told him. ‘‘But if you can get into the costume, the job’s yours.’’
The following day Bulloch turned up at Elstree studios and climbed into the outfit created for Boba
Fett, the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter, hired by Jabba the
Hutt to capture Han
Solo and Luke
Skywalker. The fearsome helmet and armour, equipped with a jet pack and weapons galore, ‘‘fitted like it was meant to be’’, Bulloch recalled. ‘‘It’s not a big role but I think you’ll have some fun,’’ the director, George Lucas, told him.
The part involved less than 20 minutes of screen time and Bulloch had just four lines, and managed to get one of those wrong. After capturing Han Solo he was meant to tell the guards: ‘‘Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.’’ When they came to shoot the scene, he instead uttered the words: ‘‘Put Captain Cargo in the Solo hold.’’ It mattered not, for nobody could hear his muffled voice inside his helmet and in any case the American actor Jason Wingreen was lined up to overdub the lines.
More important to the success of the role was Bulloch’s demeanour, which he modelled on Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. ‘‘It’s exactly that, but in armour,’’ he explained. ‘‘He doesn’t move very fast, but when he does, it’s quick and it’s over – no questions asked. That’s what I found with Boba Fett. The less I do, the better. He stands in a certain way. He cradles his gun, and he’s always ready.’’
Barely able to see out of his helmet and hampered by the heavy jet-pack on his back, Bulloch rehearsed his scenes by tracing and counting his steps before donning his costume.
Even then he got it wrong on at least one occasion, and toppled over while trying not to tread on Darth Vader’s cloak. The weight of the jet-pack was so great that he was unable to get back up without assistance.
He reprised the role in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, in which his character met his presumed death when a blinded Han Solo inadvertently set off the bounty hunter’s jetpack, sending him falling into the maw of the carnivorous monster Sarlacc.
Small part it may have been, but it was enough to make Boba Fett a fan favourite. After the special editions of the films were released in 1997, Bulloch spent an entire year in America attending dozens of Star Wars
‘‘There’s no point in saying, ‘I’ve moved on ... and I don’t want to talk about Star Wars’. I do want to talk about it, because it changed my life in such a wonderful way.’’
conventions and signing countless autographs. One fan pulled up his shirt to reveal a tattoo of Boba Fett on his chest and asked Bulloch to sign it with a felt-tip pen. He returned two hours later to display the autograph now proudly tattooed on his flesh.
A Star Wars exhibition in Japan was attended by more than 50,000 fans asking Bulloch technical questions such as ‘‘Did you use the BlasTech E33 rifle in the first film or the second film?’’
‘‘I turn around and say, ‘I’m terribly sorry, it’s classified information. I’m not allowed to tell you.’ It’s the best answer, because they know far more about it than I do.’’
Jeremy Bulloch was born in Leicestershire, central England, one of six children from his mother’s two marriages. His younger sister was the actress Sally Bulloch and his half-brother Watts worked not only on Star
Wars but also on the Indiana Jones films and
Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Bulloch’s acting career began with a cereal commercial at the age of 10. He appeared in films for children’s TV alongside his sister and attended the Corona Academy Drama School. His first adult role came at 17 in
Summer Holiday (1963), starring Cliff Richard. There were appearances in Doctor Who and as Q’s assistant Smithers in the James Bond films For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy.
He died of complications from Parkinson’s disease, and is survived by his wife Maureen; their sons, Jamie, a translator, and Robbie, an actor; and a third son, Christian, from an earlier relationship.
If it concerned him that, in a varied career on stage and screen, all anyone ever asked him about was one role, he never let it show. ‘‘There’s no point in saying, ‘I’ve moved on, I’m playing King Lear now and I don’t want to talk about Star Wars,’ ’’ he remarked.
‘‘I do want to talk about it, because it changed my life in such a wonderful way.’’ –
The Times