Actor Bids Fond Farewell to C-3PO
LONDON (Reuters) – Bidding goodbye to the gold robot after almost 30 years, Anthony Daniels shed a nostalgic tear for the mechanical manservant who changed his life.
“Oh yes, it was with moisture. This was very much a fond farewell,” Daniels said of his last scene as C-3PO, the android who became an icon in the “Star Wars” movies.
His last scene in the sixth and final film was hardly the heady stuff of magic for Daniels. Digital effects saw to that.
“I finished filming on the last film last week. For the final shot I walked along a blue corridor with a blue background behind me talking to someone who wasn’t there.” he said.
“Revenge of the Sith” is due out next May and completes a trilogy of pre-quels, which tell the back story of the original movie about a battle between good and evil in a distant galaxy.
Daniels makes no secret about his favorite of the six.
“The first film spoke to everyone on the planet. It still works as a funny, bright movie. It still has legs,” he said of the films by U.S. director George Lucas.
When Lucas returned to the pre-quels, Daniels was not so sure.
“George’s devotion to digital effects over-balanced the films. Too many digital funky characters become a little bit wearing. The storytelling always gets subsumed.”
STRANGE IMMORTALITY
For the 58-year-old Daniels, playing a fastidious robot who sounds like a prissy English butler transformed his career.
“He (C-3PO) gave me that lead into a strange kind of immortality. People are very fond of him. His image has haunted me around the planet,” he said.
There was also an undeniable sense of achievement from the self-deprecating British actor as he reflected on the squirming discomfort of clunking around the Tunisian desert in searing heat to make film history.
“He has been a best friend for me. He is going to live forever in the ether,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Critics may have admired his on-screen chemistry with fellow robot R2-D2 but Daniels said: “I was talking to myself all the time. It was a very lonely experience. I was locked inside a box and had a friend who didn’t speak to me.”
The English stage actor was initially reluctant to audition for the part and even risked “losing his voice” to Hollywood star Richard Dreyfuss as Lucas contemplated dubbing him over.
“Now I have the honor of being the only person to have appeared in all of the movies and I have become the principal spokesman for them,” he said.
For there is plenty of life left in the “Star Wars” phenomenon with the worldwide DVD launch of the first three movies on Sept. 21.
Just listening to Daniels’ schedule is exhausting.
There is the Paris “Star Wars” convention, the “Star Wars” exhibition in Osaka, being inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in Pittsburgh, joining forces with storm troopers in London to launch the DVD.
Then comes all the razzmatazz of the final pre-quel.
But nothing will erase his treasured memory of the first time he saw a sketch of the android he was to play.
“When I saw the painting by the design artist, the eyes of the character looked deep into my soul. He was a very forlorn figure with an abandoned air. He really did look into my soul. We made this tremendous contact.”
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