David Charles Prowse (1 July 1935 – 28 November 2020) was an English actor, bodybuilder, strongman and weightlifter. He portrayed Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy and a manservant in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. In 2015, he starred in two documentaries concerning his Darth Vader role, one titled The Force's Mouth, which included Prowse voicing Darth Vader's lines with studio effects applied for the first time, and the other titled I Am Your Father, covering the subject of the fallout between Prowse and Lucasfilm.
Prior to his role as Vader, Prowse had established himself as a super-hero figure in the United Kingdom as the Green Cross Man in Green Cross Code media aimed at teaching children and young people road safety.
David Charles Prowse was born on 1 July 1935 in Bristol, England. He was the son of Gladys (née Burt) and Charles Prowse. He was brought up on the Southmead housing estate in Bristol, gaining a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School. Prowse was tall, standing 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), and developed an interest in bodybuilding. His early jobs included working as a bouncer at a dance hall and at Henleaze Swimming Pool, where he met his future wife. Following his successes from 1961 in the British heavyweight weightlifting championship, he left Bristol in 1963 to work for a London weightlifting company.
Prowse won the British heavyweight weightlifting championship in 1962. The following two years he represented England in the weightlifting event at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia. During his bodybuilding course, Prowse became friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.
Prowse could deadlift as much as 785 lb (356 kg) and in 1963, became the first man to lift the Dinnie Stones after Dinnie father and son duo. During his prime, Prowse weighed around 283 pounds (128 kg).
During the 1970s, Prowse developed a minor interest with wrestling and trained many British wrestlers of the time.
Prowse helped to train Christopher Reeve for the lead role in Superman (1978) after lobbying for the part himself. In a television interview, he related how his response to being told "we've found our Superman" was "Thank you very much." Only then was he told that Reeve had been chosen for the role and he was to only be a trainer. He trained Cary Elwes for his role as Westley in The Princess Bride (1987).
Prowse also became fitness consultant to Harrods, ripped up phone books under the stage name 'Jack the Ripper', and opened a series of gyms, including The Dave Prowse Fitness Centre in Southwark, London. Notably, Arnold Schwarzenegger sometimes trained at Prowse's gym and the British bodybuilder was also a judge at the last Mr. Universe contest Schwarzenegger won.
After making his last professional film appearance as Vader in 1983, he returned his major focus to weightlifting and continued to appear on some strength demonstrations in the United Kingdom until the late 1990s.
His first appearance is a brief cameo in a gym as a weightlifter in the 1968 TV show The Champions: the opening sequence of episode 2 "The Invisible Man". Also in 1968, he was cast as kilt wearing and bagpipe playing Emlyn MacGregor in The Beverly Hillbillies episode "Coming Through the Rye" (season 7 episode 4). He made an appearance as henchman Tony in the 1969 TV show The Saint (series 6 episode 20) starring Roger Moore.
In the United Kingdom, Prowse was well known as the Green Cross Man, a superhero invented to promote a road safety campaign for children in 1975. As a result of his association with the campaign, which ran between 1971 and 1990, he received the MBE in 2000.
He had a role as Frank Alexander's manservant, Julian, in the film A Clockwork Orange (1971), in which he was noticed by the future Star Wars director George Lucas. He played a circus strongman in Vampire Circus (1972), a Minotaur in the Doctor Who serial The Time Monster (also 1972), and an android named Coppin in The Tomorrow People in 1973. He appeared in an episode of Space: 1999, "The Beta Cloud" (1976), right before he was cast as Darth Vader. Around that time, he appeared as the Black Knight in the Terry Gilliam film Jabberwocky (1977) and was supposed to play Minoton in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), but the part went to Peter Mayhew instead, who later played Chewbacca in Star Wars.
Prowse claimed that he nearly got the role of Jaws in James Bond (which ultimately went to Richard Kiel) and was offered the part of Conan the Barbarian before Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Prowse had a small role as Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard in the 1981 BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He appeared in the first series of Ace of Wands on LWT and as a bodyguard in Callan (1974), a feature film version of the TV series, as well as the character Wellington in one episode of the TV series. He played Charles, the duke's wrestler, in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of As You Like It in 1978.
Prowse played Frankenstein's monster in three films, Casino Royale and the Hammer horrors The Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Prowse made two uncredited appearances on The Benny Hill Show. On Hill's first show for Thames Television in 1969, he played a briefs-clad muscleman in the "Ye Olde Wishing Well" quickie, and in 1984 "Scuttlevision" he showed off his muscles in a sketch set to the song "Stupid Cupid". The earlier routine was also featured in the 1974 film The Best of Benny Hill, in which he was credited.
Among his many non-speaking roles, Prowse played a major role in "Portrait of Brenda", the penultimate episode of The Saint broadcast in 1969.
In May 2010, he played Frank Bryan in The Kindness of Strangers, an independent British film produced by Queen Bee Films. The film screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
Prowse played the physical form of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Prowse spoke the dialogue during filming, but George Lucas wanted a "darker voice" than Prowse's relatively jovial West Country accent, and had James Earl Jones provide a more sinister, malevolent voice for the character. Prowse stated he was originally told he would be seen and heard at the end of Return of the Jedi when Vader's mask was removed. Instead, actor Sebastian Shaw was used. Upon Prowse's death, Lucas stated that:David brought a physicality to Darth Vader that was essential for the character. He made Vader leap off the page and on to the big screen, with an imposing stature and movement performance to match the intensity and undercurrent of Vader's presence. David was up for anything and contributed to the success of what would become a memorable, tragic figure.In the 2004 documentary Empire of Dreams, actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original trilogy films, quipped that they nicknamed Prowse "Darth Farmer" (a jibe regarding his West Country accent). In the lightsaber fight scenes between Vader and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Prowse, who was not a very skilled swordsman and kept breaking the staves used as the lightsabers, was replaced by the scene's fight choreographer, the stuntman and fencing coach Bob Anderson. Prowse felt sidelined by Anderson during the making of Return of the Jedi in particular, and said he was only able to persuade director Richard Marquand that he should be the one to throw Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) down the shaft after Marquand had tried and failed for a week to film the scene successfully without him.