Ahmed Best, the actor who brought animated Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks to life, has said that backlash against his Phantom Menace character led him to contemplate suicide in the late Nineties.

The Bronx-born actor shared a photograph on Twitter of himself and his son standing on a bridge, captioning it: "the place [where he] almost ended [his] life," to Twitter.

Jar Jar Binks was one of the most anticipated characters of the Star Wars prequels and was even given a Rolling Stone cover, headlined "Jar Jar Superstar", for the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999.

But the alien, who was the first computer generated main character in a movie franchise, was not received well by ardent Star Wars fans.

As with George Lucas' characters, Chewbacca and C-3PO, Binks was intended to inject some light comic relief into the franchise. Instead, he was accused of being a black minstrel type that advocates stereotypes of lazy Caribbean people.