Anthony Daniels

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Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels with C-3PO's head, 2005
Born	21 February 1946 (1946-02-21) (age 63) Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1976 - present
Official website

Anthony Kingsley Daniels (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor, best known for his role as the droid C-3PO in the Star Wars series of films made between 1977 and 2005.

Biography

Daniels was born in Salisbury, England, the son of a plastics company executive.^[1]

Film and TV career

Aside from playing the fussy droid in all six movies, Daniels has reprised the role frequently over the past three decades. He's donned the shiny suit for various promotional work, including hosting The Making of Star Wars; for appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street; for The Star Wars Holiday Special; for commercials including Kenner toys, a no-smoking PSA, and even a breakfast cereal based on the character; and for prequel tie-ins such as Star Wars Connections and The Science of Star Wars. He also played C-3PO vocally in a radio serial based on the original trilogy; for the Christmas-themed Christmas in the Stars album; for the Disneyland theme park attraction Star Tours; and also for three animated series: Droids , Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars: The Clone Wars . He also provided the narration and all character voices for the Dark Force Rising and The Last Command audio books. Daniels also has a cameo in the Outlander nightclub scene early in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones as a different character, Lieutenant Dannl Faytonni, the man in blue uniform who can be seen in a cutaway reaction shot after Obi-Wan disarms the bounty hunter Zam Wesell. Faytonni can also be seen at the Galaxies Opera House in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

Daniels was the voice of Legolas in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He crops up intermittently on British TV in various dramas, notably in a recurring role in Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren. He also played the priest in the 1990 British spoof horror film I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle.

Radio

Recently appeared on Jo Russell's Absolute Radio show and revealed he's only just worked out what the Star Wars story is about.

Behind the Scenes

Anthony Daniels was never a science fiction fan. The only science fiction movie he ever saw in a theatre was 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He was so dissatisfied with the movie that he walked out after only ten minutes and demanded his money back.^[2]

He was the only cast member of the Star Wars trilogy to voice his character in all three episodes of National Public Radio's dramatizations of the Star Wars trilogy (while Mark Hamill voiced Luke Skywalker for both A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, and Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando Calrissian for The Empire Strikes Back, when the Return of the Jedi adaptation was recorded many years later, Hamill and Williams were replaced by Joshua Fardon and Arye Gross, respectively).

Daniels also contributed the foreword to the collected scripts of the Return of the Jedi radio drama, as their author Brian Daley died just as the episodes were being recorded. Daniels' other Star Wars-related writings include the Wonder Column for Star Wars Insider magazine and a comic book adventure for C-3PO and R2-D2 entitled The Protocol Offensive, published by Dark Horse Comics.

As C-3PO, he says the first line in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, first released in 1977 and part of what is known as the Original Trilogy, and the last line in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, released in 2005 and part of the Prequel Trilogy.

In The Phantom Menace, Daniels did the voice work for C-3PO, but did not physically appear in the movie, as the character was a puppet instead of a costume - a prototype C-3PO controlled by someone else. He actually controlled the puppet for 2002's Episode II: Attack of the Clones, but all prototype scenes were cut, with the droid's first appearance in the movie being Daniels in costume. In this movie and 2005's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, he also performed the ADR vocal tracks for scenes that used CGI. Daniels is the only actor to act in the original six films, the 2008 Clone Wars film, and the related TV series (While co-stars Samuel L. Jackson reprised his role as Mace Windu and Christopher Lee reprised his role as Count Dooku in the movie, they were replaced by T. C. Carson and Corey Burton for the show).

Daniels is an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center^[3].

References

External links

• Anthony Daniels on Twitter
• Official website
• Anthony Daniels at the Internet Movie Database
• Multimedia Q&A with Daniels from the BBC website for the Ghosts of Albion