The man behind Darth Vader’s helmet, in a never-before-published interview.

In 2009, I was preparing a sequel to my first book, How to Survive a Day Job. That long out-of-print 2005 motivational tome was self-published, and consisted of nearly 80 interviews with celebrities and other creative artists as to how they attained their dream careers.

Life got in the way as life sometimes does, and the intended sequel, You’re Too Smart to Go Down Stupid, was never completed. However, a host of interviews were completed for the new volume, and they will be presented exclusively on Medium.com for the first time.

First up, David Prowse, the man behind Darth Vader’s helmet and costume in the original Star Wars trilogy.

David was an elite weightlifter in the 1960s, winning the British heavyweight weightlifting championship three times from 1962–1964. Aside from the Star Wars films, David appeared in another of my personal all-time favorites: A Clockwork Orange. He was featured in numerous films and television programs, including 1967’s Casino Royale. David was well-known in the United Kingdom as the Green Cross Code Man, a superhero promoting road safety. A bit of trivia, which punctuates David’s immense pop-culture contributions, is that he was also a prominent trainer, working with Christopher Reeve for Superman: The Movie and its sequels, and Cary Elwes for The Princess Bride.

David retired in 2016 due to health-related issues.

The David Prowse Interview

Joel: Dave, can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing? Did you want to always be either an athlete or an actor?

David: I wouldn’t say always, but I was a very, very good schoolboy athlete up until the age of thirteen. I was a very fast schoolboy sprinter, and I was a very, very good rugby player. And I really thought I had a career mapped out for me as a professional athlete. Well, not a professional athlete, but as a first-class athlete.

And then, unfortunately, I started having trouble with one of my knees. It started swelling up and I had to break loose from the pain. I was in the hospital for just over a year. When I came out, I was in a leg brace. And so, I was in hospital for the whole of my teenage years from 13 to 14. I came out in a leg brace, which I was in until I was about 15-and-a-half.

And at the age of 15-and-a-half they said, “Really, nothing was wrong with you in the first instance, it was just your joints reacting to your growing. And we suggest you start doing some exercises to build yourself up.” Because I’d shot up. I’d gone from 5'9" when I went into hospital, and I was 6’3”, or 6’5” actually when I came out of the brace two years later. So I just shot up.

I happened to be walking past a shop in Bristol. I had started trying to swim and I didn’t like it very much, and I was walking past a shop on the way home one day when I saw this bodybuilding magazine in the window. And at the age of 15-and-a-half I was totally smitten with the thought of a nice physique. And that was it, basically. I mean, from the time I was 15-and-a-half onward, my only ambition in life was to be Mr. Universe.

It took me nine years to get from being tall and skinny to tall and strong. I was registered as a crippled child due to the knee. It took me nine years to go from weighing, I think, about 160 at 6’5”, to entering the Mr. Universe contest, or being invited to enter the Mr. Universe contest. I was 6’7”, and I weighed about 250. And it took me nine years from the time I was about 15-and-a-half until the time I was 25. I entered the Mr. Universe contest when I was 25.

Joel: Did you have any early influences, either personal or professional?

David: Well, really no parental influence at all. My father died when I was five. He had a duodenal ulcer, and he went into hospital for it, and for some unknown reason, as he was recovering the whole thing burst, and then he was dead within hours.

As I said, I was only five years of age at the time, and my mother obviously then had the problem of bringing up myself, my brother, and my sister with no money. And she had to take in borders and lodgers to help make ends meet. And not only did we have that, but her mother came to stay with us as well, and one of her sisters also came to stay with us. So we had a real houseful, you see. Because of that, she really had very little time to be much of an influence on me.

I’ll also say, though, she was a wonderful mother, and she worked very hard to keep me in school and to — I went to Bristol Grammar School, which is one of the best schools in Bristol. She did everything she possibly could to keep me at school. And my brother likewise. He got a scholarship to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital School, which was another of the best schools in Bristol. And she managed to scrape together enough money to keep us going all the time.

But, no, she was obviously a heavy influence on our upbringing, but she was not much of an influence on my career. When I left school, all I wanted to do was to find a job which was conducive to my training. I had this big ambition to be Mr. Universe, to get into the Mr. Universe contest. And little did I know that it was going to take me nine years of sort of chopping and changing jobs which were conducive to the training.

Joel: What does the word “persistence” mean to you?

David: Well, the word is very important to me. I think once you — if you have this driving ambition, you have to have persistence to go with the driving ambition. And I’d never ever, and throughout my life now, I’d never say die, you know. You never say you can’t do something. I can do. I can basically do anything that I put my hand to if I work hard enough.

I persist long enough to do what I want to do. Like with all the work that I’m doing at the moment. I’ve had lots of physical problems over the years, from arthritic hips to blood diseases to goodness knows what. But not once have I ever let it get me down. I’ve never let it stop me from doing anything. Only if I’m in hospital dying. If I’m not dying, I’ll be with you.

Joel: If you don’t want to get into this further, we don’t have to, but you mentioned the health issues. Do you want to get into that a little more, because you kept working. That’s persistence to me.

David: Well, I never had any problems whatsoever until 1989. I had a fantastic career in weightlifting, bodybuilding, Highland Games … and all this heavy lifting and this and that, and I never ever had an injury. And then in 1989, which was years after my physical career ended, as it were — my athletic career ended, my competing career ended — I was training in the gymnasium. I was in a leg press machine, and the leg press machine came crashing down on me and knocked my hip out. And that led to my going to see a surgeon about the hip, because I was having terrible pain, and the surgeon said, “Well, I’m sorry, but you’ve got an arthritic hip and sooner or later you’re going to have to have it replaced.”

From then on, a whole series of things went wrong. I’ve got the arthritic hip, and when I’m recovering from that first replacement, my ankle broke on the other side, and they didn’t do anything about it at the time other than strap it up. And that eventually finished with a dead joint. Eventually, years later, I had to have an ankle fusion operation. Then the other hip went, and I had to have that one replaced, and then the first hip gave out, and I had to have that one re-done. I’ve had a whole series of hip operations.

And also, I’ve received a lot of dislocations. I’m one of these people … I can’t sit still. I can’t — the thought of sitting around convalescing, I just couldn’t do. I mean, I was going into hospital. I remember going into it for a hip operation, and I had the operation done on Tuesday. I went in on a Monday, had the operation done on Tuesday. I sat on the edge of the bed Wednesday, was in a walking frame Thursday, crutches Friday, and I went to a convention on Saturday. I went and I sat all day at a convention. And it dislocated Saturday night. And it dislocated again the following Wednesday and dislocated the following weekend. I had three dislocations there. That’s typical of me. That’s me all over.

So, you know, you have the thing dislocating, and then I get up off the operating theater and walk out of the theater.

Joel: I think I’m going to have to steer it over to happier questions here.

David: No, it’s okay. In the year 2000, I got myself a blood disease from somewhere or another. I got it, and that nearly killed me. I also had, they eventually discovered, something on the spine. That was a really serious problem. And I nearly died with that.

Finally, it was quite after that, I had another spell where I woke up one day and my left arm was paralyzed, completely paralyzed. I couldn’t do anything with it, and I was due to go to Germany the following day. That was on a Friday. And this arm was completely paralyzed, and I’m supposed to go to Germany for three days.

I went.

So now I’m in Germany and booked into a hotel, and that night the other arm became paralyzed. Now I’m stuck in Germany in a hotel with both arms completely paralyzed, and they guy who had to come to collect me in the morning had to go into the room and get me up and get me dressed. I couldn’t even get out of bed. And, but I still felt okay myself, you know. And then whole of that day, it was a Saturday, I felt okay. The feeling started to come back in my right arm, which is my signing arm, which is good. But the other arm stayed paralyzed. And the following day was a Sunday, I was at the convention, and I was having to lift my arm up and put on for photographs and sign the pictures.

The following day, which was Monday, I really felt bad. I was going home, my hip was killing me, and my back was aching like mad. I got home and they raced me into hospital, where I was diagnosed with this blood disease.

I was in hospital for several weeks for that. Eventually, I got out of it and carried on as normal.

The bottom line is once arthritis reared it’s ugly head, as it were, it’s just been one thing after another after another. You know, you have a hip operation done — and they only last for so long, and then, of course, that eventually wears out, especially if you’re as busy as I am and as heavy as I am. I’m a big guy.

Joel: You’re 6’7”?

David: Well, I was 6’7”. I’m 6’5” now. Every time I have an operation I go down a touch.

Joel: Well, let me ask you this: I’m in America here, so a lot of us, well, I’m familiar with it, but a lot of people are not familiar with the Green Cross Code Man.

David: That was at the same time that I did Star Wars. And I was offered the part of this character, which is like a Superman-type character in a series of road safety commercials for children.

In England, we have this thing called “code” that every child in Great Britain learns, and it consists basically of four sentences: First, “Find a safe place to cross, then stop.” Second sentence says, “Stand near the curb, not on it, or stand back away from the edge of the curb.” And then the third one says, “Look all around for traffic, and if traffic is coming, let it pass.” And finally, “If there’s no traffic coming, walk straight across the road, but look and listen as you cross.”

And every child in Great Britain learns this. They learn it first of all from their parents. They learn it in nursery school. The police go into the schools to enforce the road safety campaign, and make sure all the teachers are teaching the lessons and so on and so forth. It was a huge, huge campaign.

And I got invited to front it for the government, because they were having problems. The campaign was fronted by three personalities every year, and all of the kids knew the personalities. They didn’t know what the campaign was all about. And so they got me in, because I played like a Superman character, and it was exactly the same time as I was filming Star Wars.

The campaign eventually became one of the most successful safety campaigns that there’s ever been. I did it over 14 years. And in 14 years I went to 700 cities throughout the world. I went to 2000 schools. I spoke to over half a million children. And the net result was in Great Britain alone, we actually reduced the road accidents by half. They went down from 40,000 a year to less than 20,000. And we’d actually saved something in the region of a quarter of a million children’s lives with the campaign.

In the year 2000, I got awarded the M.B.E. from the Queen for services for road safety and charity, which is rather nice. It’s great to have that recognition. I’m very proud of the Green Cross career, which may be the best thing I’ve ever done. And I’m also eternally grateful to Star Wars, of course, because the Green Cross career happened slightly before Star Wars. And at one stage, as soon as the government knew I was the evil villain of Star Wars, they were going to sack me, because they thought my image as the evil villain would have a detrimental effect on this goody-goody Green Cross Code man character. But exactly the opposite happened. And all the kids knew the Green Cross Code Man was really Darth Vader, of course all the kids loved Darth Vader. And it was Darth Vader talking to them about road safety. And that was one of the successes of the campaign.

Joel: What’s your definition of success and why?

David: I think success is just being happy with yourself and being happy with everything and in everything that you do. Whether you’re a success in business or a success as far as your marriage is concerned, or whether having a successful social life or whatever it is, it’s just being happy with the position you’re at.

Success doesn’t necessarily mean financial success or monetary rewards. Success is just being happy with where you are.

Joel: Do you recall any moments in your life where you were about to give up on your chosen career path?

David: No, never. Not even in my darkest … Well, as far as the career, you see, I never ever had any idea of a career. I left school really not knowing what I wanted to do. I went into an accountancy office to start with, and I hated every minute of it because all I wanted to do was train.

And so, even with all the training I was doing, there was never any possibility of a career because there was no such thing as a professional bodybuilder or professional weightlifter earning a living at it back then. Nobody had ever made any money from their strength, as it were, in those days. I’m talking about the early-60s.

I had no aspirations other than training. When I was the British heavyweight weightlifting champion — prior to that I was doing all sorts of jobs which were conducive to the training. I was a lifeguard at a big swimming pool for a long period. I was the bouncer at the big dance places in Bristol. I did that for several years, because it was convenient. I only had to work in the evenings and I had all day to train, you see.

I started working for a meat company because I thought I’d get the free meat I needed, obviously, for all my training. And I was doing all sorts of things, but I had no real sort of ambitions. There was just never any possibility of my earning any money at what I was doing.

It wasn’t until 1963 came along. I was the British heavyweight weightlifting champion and I met an American who came to Bristol. We did a little training together, and one day he turned to me and he said, “Look, I’m the European director for the Weider Organization” — which is a bodybuilding concern, Joe Weider and Ben Weider — “and I’m setting up a business in Croydon. Would you be interested?”

I said, “Well, let me know if anything pops up,” and then I didn’t think anything more about it. At the time I was working for a firm just doing clerical work, and out of the blue I get a phone call. And everybody was all very excited in the office that somebody was calling me from Paris. And it was this guy. And he said, “I’m opening up a shop in Croydon, and I would like you to come out and take over the running of the shop.” He said, “You can sell anything you like as long as you sell our equipment as well, our weightlifting equipment.”

So that was how I came to leave Bristol then and come up to London to work. I was still the British heavyweight weightlifting champion, but the job never ever materialized. He sort of did the dirty on me and offered it to somebody else before I even arrived to work for him. Eventually, though, I ended up working as a sales manager for the company. I was the European sales manager.

That introduced me to the London sports trade, and it got me into places like Harrods and Lillywhites, and all the major sports departments. And I had lots of success. I was the first person ever to sell Speedo swimwear. I was the person who introduced the ball work into Great Britain, which is one of the biggest physical workout tasks there’d ever been.

It was me that introduced Tonka toys — remember Tonka toys? It was me that introduced Tonka toys to Great Britain. I had lots of success that way. But I still had basically no ambition. I didn’t want to become a super salesman or anything like that. I didn’t want to — I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was just like living from day to day and hoping that something interesting would come along.

And then one day I just happened to call into a gymnasium. I was trying to sell weightlifting equipment. I called into this agency, or it was a gymnasium called the Mayfair Gym. I called into this gymnasium, and they had a stunt agency attached to the gymnasium, and the guy who ran it said to me, “Look, have you ever done any work in show business? Would you be interested?”

And I said, “Well, you know, I’ve never acted before in my life. I’m not really interested. I’m not an actor.”

And he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll cross that hurdle when we come to it, you see.”

So I never thought any more about it. So that was it — it was forgotten. And within two weeks I get a phone call from him. “We’re looking for somebody like you at the Mermaid Theatre,” which is one of the big Western London theaters. So I get round there and see Bernard Miles, who’s the director of the play, not knowing anything about the part or anything like that.

And they were in a huddle on stage. There was only three people, including Bernard.

And so they said, “We’ve got this play and we’re stuck with the ending, because we need, we need death to take this actor away, the male actor. He’s waiting for death to come and take him away, you see.” And then they said, “We were trying to work with wires — this actor was going to be suspended on wires and lifted up very slowly, but we want the whole thing to make it look as if he’s levitating, you see. We’ve auditioned lots of actors this week to see if anybody can pick him up, but he’s been dropped about six times.” And they said, “Do you think you could do it?”

And I said, “Well, yeah.”

They said we’d like to see you. I said, “Well, tell me actually what you want and I’ll show you.”

So they had him on the bed, and I just went over and I sort of scooped him up off the bed and picked him up very slowly and held him in my arms and said, “Well, where would you like him?”

They said, “Oh, could you do that twice nightly?”

I said, “You pay me enough money, I’ll do it as many times a night as you like.”

And that was the interesting thing there — it got me into the actor’s union, because in those days you couldn’t get into the actor’s union unless you had a job. You couldn’t get a job unless you were a member of the actor’s union. It was a silly situation. But that got me in too. That got me into the actor’s union.

And then the agent said, “Can I send you out for other work?”

The next thing I know I was doing TV commercials, and I went from TV commercials to TV series, and then from TV series to my very first film, which was Casino Royale.

I think, then, since Casino Royale, I worked with people like David Niven and Orson Welles and Woody Allen and and Peter O’Toole and Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and all these people like that. This to me is an interesting occupation. I think I could manage this.

So really, the acting thing sort of took over as an ambition but at the same time I was running my own health studios. I started running my own gymnasium. And I opened up my first gymnasium in ’69 and then continued on for the next thirty years.

I had the gymnasiums on one side, running health studios, and the main one, which ran for thirty years and two others, which ran for lesser periods, so it all ran together. It was quite nice.

But it was interesting. I used to meet lots of people in the film business, and then, of course, they’d come up to me and say, “Where’s your gymnasium? Can we come and train with you?” So I used to end up training all these famous people down at the gym.

Joel: So each one worked off of the other.

David: Yeah, of course, yeah.

Joel: Let me ask you this: What words of advice would you give to someone who’s overwhelmed in life — I mean, you’ve certainly gone through some obstacles — what words of advice would you give to someone who’s completely overwhelmed in life but still has the desire to meet a chosen career path?

David: You have to go at it right away. People always come up to me and say, “How do I become an actor? What do I do? I want to become an actor. I’ve got the ambition. I want to be an actor.”

And I say, “Well, have you done anything in the way of dramatics?” They say, “Well … no.” And I say, “The first thing you do is you join an amateur dramatic society and start learning your trade. Learn your trade. And do dramatics to start with and you can go into semi-professional stuff and so on and so forth. And then the hard work starts; once you’ve done all that then the hard work starts.

But I said, anybody who wants to do anything — you can basically do anything you want provided you’ve got the aptitude and you’ve got the, what we call “wherewithal.” I mean, some of these things you need money to do. But providing you’ve got the aptitude and you’ve got the mental capacity to work hard at something you’re going to do, you can do it. Just be positive about it and work towards that end.

Joel: What do you aspire to now?

David: I think to be perfectly honest, I’m very happy with my situation in life at the present moment. I’ve written a couple of books, which has been a nice experience.

Joel: Tell me about them.

David: Well, I kicked off by writing a book called Fitness Is Fun. Years ago I decided I wanted to do a book about my ideas on exercising and training, because I was regarded as the number one personal trainer in the world. I used to train people like — I trained Bianca Jagger, and I trained Albert Finney, and I trained Daniel Day-Lewis, I trained the former prime minister, and I trained Christopher Reeve for Superman, and I trained Vanessa Redgrave, and I trained lots of names, especially English name personalities.

And so I decided I wanted to really put my ideas as to how people should train into a book, and that’s what I did. And it came out, and it’s a book called Fitness Is Fun. And that was quite successful, and then a couple years later when the campaign was really going well, I got a publisher who said, “How would you like to put pen to paper and write the book on safety for kids?” And I said, “Well, you’re not going to get much of a book out of four sentences I used to say … although I used to do a three-quarters of an hour show in schools based on four sentences like that.” And it was very entertaining, one of the best shows that the schools had ever seen like that. And I said, “Why don’t we go into all aspects of safety for children? Like safety at school, safety when they go swimming, safety when on the beach … all aspects of safety?” And this is what we did.

I then got in touch with all the very famous television personalities that I knew over here, and I said, “Look, would you mind doing me a favor? I’m writing this book. What I’d like you to do is just front the article for me. I’ll write this — I’ll write the feature about safety and I’ll research the feature about safety. All I just want to do is put your name on it.” Like, for instance, the most famous comedy duo in the country was Morecambe and Wise, who are very, very famous over here. And they used to get 25 million people watching their Christmas program on a Christmas afternoon, and I asked, “Do you mind if I put your name in front of an article?” And they and everybody came up and agreed. And it wonderful.

So we came out with lovely book on safety for kids. And then, of course, now I’ve just recently put pen to paper again and written like an autobiography, which has come out as a real candid book you know, straight from the horse’s mouth. The mouth was bigger than I ever thought it was going to be. The autobiography made 416 pages. And the photographic supplement that goes with it is another 450 pages. So you’ve got 860-odd pages of an autobiography.

Joel: Where could someone order it?

David: Well, you can order it from my website, which is www.darthvader-starwars.com.

I’ve also got a couple more that I’m interested in doing. For years and years I’ve been collecting material on weightlifters, boxers, strongmen, wrestlers, circus performers and other people like this that were really interesting.

Years and years ago there used to be a very famous trio called the Saxon Trio, and one of these guys held the world record from the early 1900s right up until the late-60s, for putting weights overhead. He used to stand a barbell up on end and then used to let the barbell fall over him, and then he used to pull away from it. And then he’d push it up with one hand and then stand up with it. I mean, he put something like 386 pounds above his head with one hand.

With all that weight up over his head, he’d the would then bend down and pick up a 56-pound weight up off the floor with his other hand, and then put that above his head. It was a world record at the time, 441 pounds with what we call “two hands, any hand.” And that stayed as a world record until the drugs arrived on the scene, and the Russian heavyweights and the East German heavyweights and the American heavyweights eventually beat it, but it stood for 60 or 70 years, this record.

Joel: So you’re doing a book on…

David: I’m doing a book all about these all-time weightlifter strongmen, and there’s quite a bit in there about boxing. And one of the things that I’m also doing is I’ve got a book featuring Sugar Ray Robinson.

Joel: We have to talk, because that’s actually my favorite sport.

David: Boxing?

Joel: Yeah, and I have a collection of boxing memorabilia, so if you’re ever in my neck of the woods …

David: You’ll need to come here.

Joel: To wrap, anything you’re working on, books and otherwise, people can find on your website?

David: Yeah. Again, it’s www.darthvader-starwars.com. Thank you, Joel. I enjoyed this.

Shortly after this interview, in 2009, Dave was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A decade later, he remains retired, but his innumerable contributions to pop-culture will always be remembered.