Man behind the mask: actor who played Darth Vader dies
Star Wars icon David Prowse dies aged 85
DAVID PROWSE, who has died aged 85, was a British bodybuilder and actor who cut an imposing figure as the evil overlord Darth Vader in the space epic Star Wars.
A hulking 6ft 6in, as Darth Vader Prowse brought his experience as a bodybuilder to the character’s smooth, deliberate movements – partly out of necessity. With his body clad from head-to-toe in black leather and his face enclosed by a mask, he was functionally blind on set. The mask had to be filled with foam so that it would move with Prowse whenever he turned his head. Filming at the height of summer in 1976 meant that he lost kilos in sweat.
The set-up also meant that his dialogue was muffled, and in the event the American actor James Earl Jones provided Vader’s voice for the final cut. Prowse knew nothing of this decision until the first film in the trilogy, A New Hope, aired in cinemas.
Later, his co-star, Carrie Fisher, claimed that the actor’s unthreatening English burr had caused much amusement among the cast, who had nicknamed him “Darth Farmer”.
“I don’t go around saying: ‘Orl roight, moi dears’,” Prowse protested in an interview. “I think they just wanted a big, black voice for a big, black character.”
Although Prowse took pride in his work, he was vocal in his dislike of the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, and of the subsequent “prequels”. The final straw came in 2010, when Prowse featured in a documentary examining the relationship between the director George Lucas and his fiercely passionate fan base. Lucasfilms banned him from attending official conventions, but he continued to make a living selling autographs through his website.
The second of three children, David Prowse was born in Bristol on July 1 1935. His father Charlie, who ran a drapery shop, died unexpectedly when Prowse was just five.
At school, David distinguished himself as a talented athlete and rugby player. In 1948, however, his sporting career came to a halt when he developed severe knee pain.
He had surgery and spent a year in a sanotorium. He turned to bodybuilding to aid his recovery. A shot at the Mr Universe title was unsuccessful, and his confidence suffered a knock when one of the judges told him that he had ugly feet and would never be rewarded for his physique.
Prowse therefore directed his energies into pure strength training and was soon performing bench lifts of 500lb (225kg). A malodorous diet of baked beans and raw onions made him unpopular with fellow competitors, but helped him to the British Weightlifting Championships in 1962.
The subsequent publicity got him his first big-screen part, in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967). He worked steadily in television for the next decade, his imposing physique ensuring that he was frequently in demand for “monster” roles in sciencefiction shows such as Doctor Who and Space: 1999.
Stanley Kubrick spotted him demonstrating exercise equipment once and cast him as the muscular bodyguard to Patrick Magee’s vengeful writer in A Clockwork Orange (1971) – a role light on dialogue but heavy on physical menace.
George Lucas then approached him for Star Wars. Prowse was given a choice of playing Darth Vader or the hirsute alien Chewbacca; he chose the former, since filming in a gorilla-like suit in high summer sounded too arduous.
Prowse was also hired to help Christopher Reeve bulk up for the role of Superman in the 1978 film, a training programme that lasted six weeks.
In later years, Prowse suffered from poor health. A weightlifting accident in 1989 curtailed his career, and he developed severe arthritis. Though he did not renounce his association with Darth Vader, he never thought of it as his most influential role. That, to his mind, was the Britain’s Green Cross Code Man – a job that had him performing road safety demonstrations across Britain for 14 years.
He is survived by his wife Norma, whom he married in 1963, and by their three children. (
London)