Star Wars franchise is one of the biggest entities in the movie world, but, despite all the cult and size, Star Wars doesn’t have the lofty, invincible stature that we attributed to it once upon a time. This list of previous Star Wars actors who didn’t enjoy much being a part of this franchise, tells you exactly that.
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness wasn’t gung-ho about the original Star Wars, even before he got down to the business of filming it. His biography has letters which recollect that he often told friends that the film was “fairytale rubbish” and also debated with them whether he should even accept the film or not. Even after he started working on the project, he regularly communicated how “new rubbish dialogue” come to him day after day. Another part of his biography states that though he got paid well, but, the frequently changing dialogues were terrible and he felt very old.
At another time, Guinness shared a memory of having met a child in San Francisco who told him that he had seen Star Wars more than a hundred times. Guinness asked him to stop watching the film, and this remark offended the boy as well as his mother. Guinness said that he wished that the child who would have grown up by now and would have got rid of his childhood stupidities.
Jake Lloyd
Jake Lloyd is probably the actor who felt most disheartened after working in the Star Wars franchise. Back then, it seemed that he was extremely fortunate to get the opportunity of playing a young Anakin Skywalker. However, he narrated how his life was a living hell as he was bullied at school and ultimately quit acting for good. He said how he faced intense bullying throughout his school life and even into his college time and how wherever he went, others made fun of him by imitating the sound of a lightsaber.
In fact, this bullying left him so traumatized that he destroyed every single Star Wars memorabilia that he received from the franchise. He kept his promise which he made as a tormented eight-year-old child and never acted again. Sometimes, he did attend cons to make some money, but, he hated meeting the fans. He said that the fact that this trilogy was made for children and George Lucas didn’t care to meet the expectations of grown up fans, made matters worse.
Anthony Daniels
Anthony Daniels has played the character of C-3PO in all the seven Star Wars films, and this makes him one of the very few people to have been a part of the entire franchise. While his real face remained hidden on the screen behind that golden face with a permanently etched expression of surprise, he is quite frank about discussing the franchise. He pointed out that George Lucas was not the kind of a cooperative team guy who would do the things the right way. According to him, Lucas had his way of doing things which were often not the right way of doing them. On the other hand, he has good things to say about Abrams whom he described as a collaborative director who paid heed to the words of his cast and crew, unlike Lucas who enforced his own will whether it is good or not.
He also described the digital effects of the prequel trilogy as meaningless, cold and dull.
Terence Stamp
Chancellor Valorum of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace aka Terence Stamp has been around for quite some time, and he has got award nominations as well as opportunity to work with a lot of actors and directors. In a candid interview with Empire Magazine, he let out his disgust about George Lucas who seems to have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He stated that Lucas only used to focus on the special effects, acting and other such things but was not a director capable of working with human beings.
He stated that there were two reasons behind his taking up the assignment. One was the larger than life stature of Star Wars that’s not something you can reject and the other being his desire to work with Natalie Portman as he was in love with her work in The Professional by Luc Besson. He, however, found it to be a low blow when just as he was preparing to shoot with Portman, he came to know that George Lucas had replaced her with a paper cutout for the scene. He just couldn’t take it considering the fact that he had traveled the world for the opportunity.
Ewan McGregor
What appeared to be a great opportunity when Ewan McGregor signed to play a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, turned out to be a regretful decision and Ewan has awful experience of working on the prequel trilogy. According to him, this trilogy was the worst set of films that he has ever done. He also said that he is not fond of the fans of this franchise who hound the stars for autographs and went on to call them “parasites.” To tell you honestly, he had used a lot of words apart from “parasites” to describe the fans, but, those words are improper to be mentioned here.
Peter Serafinowicz
Most people would be surprised to see this name on the list and would wonder why this British comedian whom US audiences better identify as the character Pete from Shaun of the Dead, has anything bad to say about the Star Wars franchise. In fact, most of you won’t even recall having seen him in the movies. Well, you are not wrong about not having seen him in the movies as his face was never shown on the screen. The reason was that he only gave voice over for Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace and he doesn’t have fond memories of that stint.
He said that the only brief that George Lucas gave him was to “sound evil” and that’s all he knew about Maul. What made matters worse was that hardly any of the lines recorded by him made their way through the cuts leaving the character with nothing more than 2-3 insignificant sentences. If that was not enough, he was further humiliated by not being invited to the premiere of the film. He bought a ticket to watch it, and the realized it was a miserable film.
David Prowse
David had a great misunderstanding that his character of Sith Lord would play a major role in the film and it turned out to be just about one-third of what he expected it to be. While it is understandable that he had to side-step during actions scenes which were performed by a skilled swordsman, what was not so obvious was the fact that James Earl Jones was chosen to do his voice over. Prowse said it all happened without him being in the know and he only found out about Vader’s voice belonging to someone else, just when we did.
Harrison Ford
This one certainly seems weird as we know that Han Solo is set to return for the new trilogy. But, we also know that Harrison Ford is not someone swooning over Star Wars. When Jimmy Fallon questioned him whether he got excited to be in Solo’s shoes again, Ford replied negatively by clarifying that no, what he got was paid.
Ford doesn’t like talking about the films, and it is obvious that they are not on his mind as often as on the minds of the fans. At times he ignores the questions and sometimes even mocked the films by saying that his character was “Ham Yoyo.” There was talk about Ford asking Lucas to kill the character in Return of the Jedi and was also quoted saying that three films are more than enough and he doesn’t wish to take the role forward. Now it seems that the passage of time, change of director and the ‘payday’ has made him change his mind.
