"I first encountered Emperor Palpatine at Elstree Studios in the early 1980s. He was staring back at me from a make-up mirror, larger than life and 50 times as ugly. Yellow contact lenses stung my eyes and afforded little peripheral vision. As I walked onto a vast sound stage that had been transformed into a starship hangar, populated by seemingly endless platoons of gleaming white stormtroopers, the scale of George Lucas's vision hit me. This was space spectacle, a back-drop for a space opera of Wagnerian dimension." ―Ian McDiarmid [src]

Ian McDiarmid (born August 11, 1944[1]) portrayed Darth Sidious in the Star Wars films. He appears in every film of the prequel trilogy, as well as in Return of the Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. He is one of the three actors to have appeared in all three Star Wars trilogies along with Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO). He did not play the Emperor in the original release of The Empire Strikes Back, but was edited in for the DVD release of the original trilogy for the 2004 DVD release and subsequent releases. McDiarmid also worked with George Lucas on the 1992 television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in which McDiarmid portrayed Professor Levi in the episode "Paris, October 1916."

He has also had a distinguished career in British theatre, working as Associate Artistic Director for the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester (1986 - 1989), joint Artistic Director at London's Almedia Theatre (1990 - 2002) and as a Board Member of the National Theatre of Scotland. Recent and upcoming projects include a return to the role of Teddy in Brian Friel's Faith Healer (for which he won a Tony award) and in the world premiere of Robert Holman's Jonah & Otto, which marks his return to the Royal Exchange.

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Star Wars filmography Edit

Bibliography Edit

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