David Charles Prowse MBE was an English bodybuilder, weightlifter and character actor in British film and television. He was best known for physically portraying Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy and a manservant in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. In the United Kingdom, he was well known as the Green Cross Man, a superhero invented to promote a road safety campaign for children in 1975.
About David Prowse in brief
David Charles Prowse MBE was an English bodybuilder, weightlifter and character actor in British film and television. He was best known for physically portraying Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy and a manservant in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. In the United Kingdom, he 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. In 2015, he starred in 2 documentaries concerning his Darth Vader role, one entitled The Force’s Mouth which covered an experiment hearing his voice effected as the Darth Vader Villain for the first time, and the other entitled I Am Your Father covering the subject of fallout between ProwSE and Lucasfim. He trained Christopher Reeve for the lead role in Superman after lobbying for the part himself. He 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 Prowsse Fitness Centre in Southwark, London. He won the British heavyweight weightlifting championship in 1962 and the following two years. He appeared as the Black Knight in the Terry Gilliam film Jabberwocky and was supposed to play Minoton in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger but the part went to Peter Mayhew, who later played Chewbacca in Star Wars.
He played Frankenstein’s monster in three films, Casino Royale and the Hammer horrors The Horror of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. He had a small role as Hotblack Desiato’s bodyguard in the 1981 BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In May 2010, he played Frank Frank in The Kindness of Strangers, an independent British film produced by Queen Bee Films. He claimed that he nearly got the role of Jaws in James Bond and was offered the part of Conan the Barbarian before Arnold Schwarzenegger. He made two uncredited appearances on The Benny Hill Show for Thames Television’s first show, Ye Olde Wuttie, in 1969. In 1984 he played a briefs-clad muscleman in the film The Best of Benny Hill, in which he showed off his muscles in a set to the song ‘Stupid Cupid Cupid’ The film screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 was also featured in the British film The Queen Bee, which he was credited with writing and directing. He died in a car crash in May 2013, aged 77. He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.
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