The joys and misery of being C-3PO ...and my verdict on legends of
STAR WARS legend Anthony Daniels never wanted to play a robot. When we meet, the actor is polite but guarded. His stillness and economy of movement eerily echo his famous role. His wit and warmth do not – they are quiet, but there if you care to take notice.
I confess to always finding C-3PO rather ridiculous and prissy, a galactic joke in a saga of heroes. Somehow, I had never realised how much I also regarded him as a real character – and what that took to create.
Daniels’ startlingly honest and moving new book, I Am C-3PO, is quite an eye-opener. Yes, George Lucas created the iconic droid, but Daniels gave him a personality and a voice – both of which, incidentally, the Star Wars creator had planned to erase in post-production.
Daniels, simply put, gave “Threepio” life.
He dreamed of being an actor from childhood and landed a job with the BBC Radio Repertory Company straight out of drama school. Two years later, in 1975, his agent had to force him to take a meeting for a low-budget sci-fi film. They needed an actor with mime experience.
Daniels walked into a room with George Lucas at 20th Century Fox on London’s Soho Square and saw illustrator Ralph Mcquarrie’s concept art for Threepio. “Our eyes met. I sensed his vulnerability. Maybe he sensed mine. I knew him,” he says.
For more than 44 years, Daniels has struggled with his place in the Star Wars universe. His experiences on set have often made him intensely unhappy – yet that inexplicable bond and sense of responsibility to a lonely golden robot have proved impossible to break.
Stories are legion about the chaotic shoot on the first Star Wars
He created movie gold but Anthony Daniels always felt a little overlooked as the film series rocketed through the decades, he tells STEFAN KYRIAZIS film, A New Hope. The actors ridiculed the script, Lucas gave little direction, the budget ran out. Nobody believed anything would come of it.
Everybody bonded through adversity, camaraderie in the chaos. Except one man. A lonely man trapped inside a glittering golden shell.
Daniels describes it vividly. Imagine all those hours that it takes to screw you into a hard fibreglass suit. It chafes and pinches, the weight presses heavier and heavier.
You can’t sit, bend or scratch. You need to act and react but can barely see out of the two pinholes – not other people, not where you are putting your feet. You can barely hear or be heard and the suit constricts your throat too. It’s hard to breathe through a tiny gap which the crew occasionally tape up as a “prank”.
EVERYONE breaks for lunch and you are left encased because it takes too long to get you in and out.you go with them but you can’t eat either.
You stand there silent, immobile, alone as everyone chatters away.you stare out at the desert.
Everyone breaks for dinner and socialises. You are finally released but are too tired and in too much pain to do anything. You just want to lie down before again the next day.
No wonder Daniels “gently wept” that first night in his hotel. It has defined his time in the saga, right there at its centre but always apart, ever since.
Mark Hamill, as hero Luke Skywalker, he fondly recalls, was a saving grace. “His joy and spirit were a revelation,” he says. “He was so supportive and treated me and C-3PO with respect. We bonded from the very first day.”
Famously, 40 years later, Hamill complained to Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, that Luke would never walk past his oldest friend, C-3PO, without acknowledging him in the film’s final farewell scene. It was changed and it all starts
Daniels is visibly moved remembering it. “It gives me goosebumps, his loyalty and friendship onscreen and of,” he says.
Harrison Ford was very different. “He is a complicated man. Very dry, very wry. Like me, he doesn’t suffer fools. I put in extra lines between C-3PO and Han Solo just to get a reaction.”
As for Carrie Fisher, as Princess Leia, Daniels instantly smiles. “There was a loveliness that ran through her, even when you knew on set it was difficult for her.
“I still remember that enthusiastic, wacky girl, even after all her troubles and health problems. She seemed to find the lines harder than anyone on The Last Jedi. It was like she was falling and every