Kenny Baker, the actor, who has died aged 81, starred alongside Alec Guinness and Harrison Ford yet remained forever out of sight, as the diminutive robot R2-D2 in the Star Wars films.
Standing at just 3 ft 8 in, Baker was both short enough to fit inside the metal costume and sturdy enough to operate the system of levers that propelled it. It was arduous work, with temperatures approaching 105 degrees Fahrenheit on location in North Africa. Cut off from the outside world, Baker had no way of knowing whether a take was over. A crew member had to alert him by banging on the suit with a hammer. Even worse than RD-D2 for physical comfort was the furry, bear-like suit that Baker donned to play an Ewok in the third film, Return of the Jedi, an experience he compared to “being poached”.
But it was as the mischievous but touchingly loyal R2-D2, who communicated using rather endearing electronic squeaks, that Baker found fame. His on-screen double act with the uptight humanoid robot C3PO was comic and occasionally poignant, although it later transpired that Baker’s relationship with Anthony Daniels, who played C3PO, was often strained. Baker thought that Daniels was rude and standoffish. “He really degraded me and made me feel small – for want of a better expression,” Baker later recalled.
Daniels retaliated in kind, downplaying Baker’s contribution in subsequent interviews: “I never saw him,” he said in 2011. “I mean, R2-D2 doesn’t even speak. He might as well be a bucket.” The two avoided each other when not on set, and Baker took the opportunity to express his opinion of Daniels unchallenged on the convention circuit.
In later life such fan gatherings became Baker’s main source of income, as well as an opportunity to meet with some of the cast members whose company he most enjoyed. One of his closest friendships was with Peter Mayhew, the seven-foot actor cast as the hirsute alien Chewbacca. They had bonded on set over their mutual difficulties in finding well-tailored clothes, and Mayhew paid tribute to him in his illustrated memoir for children, Growing Up Giant.
As the Star Wars franchise evolved into a pop culture phenomenon, Baker’s role became more widely celebrated. The films’ director George Lucas joined the discussion in 1999, referring to the “element of humanity to Artoo that comes from having Kenny Baker inside”.
Kenneth George Baker was born in Birmingham on August 24 1934, to parents of average height. Both his mother and father were part-time musicians, and he was encouraged to dance and learn the drums. When he was eight years old, however, his mother Ethel ran off with an American GI, dispatching Kenneth to boarding school in Sevenoaks, Kent. His father, Harold, died just two years later after an operation led to pneumonia. Kenneth found solace with the Shaftesbury Society in London, which provided training and opportunities for young people with disabilities.
After leaving school aged 16 he began work at Burton Lester’s Midget Circus, before joining Billy Smart’s circus as a clown and ringmaster. For a time he toured with Holiday on Ice in Snow White, which played to the Queen at a Royal Gala performance.
Baker’s first commercial success came with the Mini-Tones, a comic dwarf double-act with fellow performer Jack Purvis. The two were still working together on Thames Television’s variety show Opportunity Knocks when the audition call came for Star Wars. Baker refused to accept the part until Purvis was also enlisted to play a variety of alien creatures.
For the next 15 years Baker worked steadily in film and television. He had bit parts in the cult classic Flash Gordon and in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (both 1980), before securing a main speaking role in Time Bandits (1981), Terry Gilliam’s comic adventure film about a troupe of tiny time-travelling robbers. Jack Purvis also starred with Baker.
As filming drew to a close, Gilliam realised that it lacked a suitable ending. Sean Connery had been scripted to feature in a climactic battle against a personified Evil, but his schedule would not permit it. Gilliam therefore elected to kill off Baker’s character, Fidgit, arguing that Purvis could be trusted to mourn him with sufficient pathos.
Between projects the pair continued to tour as the Mini-Tones, reaching Germany as the Cold War was ending. There they were approached by a “man in a long mac” who urged them to accept a job in the CIA. “He said we’d be brilliant because absolutely no one would suspect us,” Baker recalled. They declined the offer.
After a brief flirtation with stand-up comedy in the 1990s, Baker returned to Star Wars – though technological advances threatened to make him redundant. An internet campaign orchestrated by fans of his character called on George Lucas to resist phasing out R2-D2’s jerky, hand-operated movements in favour of computer-generated effects. In any event, The Phantom Menace (1999) had him back in the suit for much of filming. By the sixth film, Revenge of the Sith (2005), however, several additional shots were done digitally to save on Baker’s travel expenses.
Kenny Baker’s wife Eileen, whom he married in 1970 and who played an Ewok in Return of the Jedi, died in 1993. They had two sons.
Kenny Baker, born August 24 1934, died August 13 2016
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