Towering English bodybuilder David Prowse was the man actor behind Darth Vader's menacing presence. With James Earl Jones's voice and Sebastian Shaw's face, he helped create one of cinema's greatest villains. But he's also famously eccentric and cantankerous, which will doubtless make the forthcomimg movie about his life more interesting.
Chronicling his journey from champion weightlifter to the biggest bad ass in the universe, Strongman will follow Prowse through his tenure as Green Cross Code man, a British road safety mascot, and his career as an actor, where he appeared in films such as 1967's Casino Royale, A Clockwork Orange, The Horror of Frankenstein, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, and others.
One of the peculiar coincidences of Star Wars casting is that Hayden Christiansen, who played a younger Anakin/Vader in the Star Wars prequels, looks uncannily like a young David Prowse, the only Vader actor whose face is never actually seen in the series. When Jedi Return of the Jedi called for mask-off scenes, however, Prowse (and Jones) were replaced by Shaw. If Hayden got the role, that'd be extremely cool.
