"I didn't put me off Star Wars but yeah, it was painful," Best said in an interview on Star Wars YouTube series, These Are The Actors You're Looking For. Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. "Even though sometimes you play characters, you put a lot of your own personality into it." "You get emotionally and personally invested in the work that you do. It's your work and you take pride in you work like, dare I say, a craftsman. So when your work is criticised negatively, you feel a hit." The 42-year-old revealed he very nearly lost the role to Michael Jackson, who was petitioning Star Wars creator George Lucas to play Jar Jar Binks.

Best said Jackson didn't get the role because he wanted to use prosthetics and makeup, while Lucas was focused on CGI. Ahmed Best said the reaction to Jar Jar Binks was 'painful'. "He was one of my biggest idols growing up and then I took a job from Michael Jackson. Not everyone can say that." Despite having taken the backlash against Jar Jar personally, Best said he understood why no one liked the character. Jar Jar Binks with Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor in The Phantom Menace. Credit:Lucasfilm

"When they see a character that's purely comical, and purely for the children, they felt probably a bit condescended to," he said. "And I can understand how they wanted more serious story but by the same token the children really liked it." One review of The Phantom Menace by The A.V. Club in 1999 was scathing in its assessment of Best's "irritatingly voiced" and "unappealing" role. "Clumsily fitted into a plot that doesn't really require him, Binks, irritatingly voiced by Ahmed Best and unappealingly rendered in a way that gives him the look of a flatulent toddler, is meant to provide comic relief, but instead kills nearly every scene in which he opens his mouth." When asked whether he would ever reprise his role as Jar Jar in future Star Wars films, Best said there was no chance.

"No I think I've done my damage. I'm good with where I stand in the Star Wars universe, I don't need to be back," he said. "I'm not really interested in coming back. I did what I did and I thought it was great and I think now it's time to move on." Fairfax Media with AAP