Actually, this IS the droid you’re looking for

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This article was published 14/12/2015 (3624 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Of all the actors who have been in a Star Wars movie, it makes sense that Anthony Daniels would be chosen to act as a Canadian emissary for Episode VII: The Force Awakens, arriving in Toronto last week to do interviews in advance of the film’s much anticipated release this week.

One: the lanky Brit actor plays the eternally fussy robot C-3PO, and as such, he is the only actor to appear in every single Star Wars movie. (Such is his familiarity with the role over the years, he always refers to his golden “protocol droid” in shortened form as “3PO.”) Who speaks the first line of dialogue in A New Hope and the last line of dialogue in Revenge of the Sith? Anthony Daniels.

Two: the character is in many ways emblematic. Daniels, 69, recalls how franchise creator George Lucas referred to him in all Star Wars films after the first one released in 1977.

“When I would arrive for the first time in the full rig-out, making an entrance in front of everybody, he would always lovingly say, ‘Ah, Star Wars has arrived.’

“He recognized, as the world did, that 3PO was one of the true iconic images,” Daniels says on the phone from Toronto. “That is, 3PO rather than me,” he adds. “I walk on the set and people think I might be the member of somebody’s family.”

Three: Daniels can keep a secret. As director J.J. Abrams has taken on the franchise in the wake of Lucas selling Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion in 2012, he has kept the plot details of Episode VII under a titanium veil of secrecy. Daniels won’t discuss the slightest detail, including the mysterious red arm C-3PO sports in the film’s production stills.

“We all want to keep the Christmas-morning effect of unwrapping the box,” he says. “When it comes to Star Wars, I think everybody is a kid. And even if the kid would be ransacking his parents’ house looking for it, we’re all waiting for that Christmas morning.

“What I loved on the set was J.J. would always say to anybody on set, the background artists and so on, how thrilled he was that everyone was there, and that they were part of the Star Wars family and to please keep the family secrets.”

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One of the more subtle reasons for appreciating Daniels’ ambassadorial role is that the actor unofficially represents the franchise’s persistent U.K. element.

Though Star Wars is an American studio franchise, it has from the get-go enjoyed representation from a galaxy of British stars, including Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing and David Prowse (middle trilogy); Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Christopher Lee (first trilogy); and now John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Gwendoline Christie and Domhnall Gleeson in the first movie of the third trilogy.

The reason, initially, was simply practical, Daniels says.

“The films have generally been filmed in England, because the technicians there are superb,” he says. “(Star Wars) was the first film I was ever in, so I was aghast at the technology, the skill of the craftsmen to make, literally, magic.

“That skill set has remained in England,” he says. “It’s not to say that Hollywood isn’t superb.”

“I think also, for the rest of the world, there is something quirky about the English voice, the English accent,” he says. “It gives a sense that the movies are without a nationality.”

“C-3PO is the quintessential Englishman,” Daniels says. But that wasn’t necessarily the case in the beginning, when Lucas strongly considered changing Daniels’ voice in post-production, the same way he employed James Earl Jones to voice Darth Vader, to the lasting chagrin of David Prowse, the English actor who contributed the physical performance.

“While we were shooting, he told me what kind of character he wanted and he kind of let me do my thing,” Daniels says. “He was rather concentrating on everything else. There was a lot of technical stuff to concentrate on. We had a lot of drama out in the desert and in London. So he let me do it.

“And then a magical thing happened while he was trying to find another voice, not that I knew it at the time,” he says. “Gradually, he came to the realization that 3PO was entirely an entity, a singularity, the voice the character, the figure, the face, the attitude.

“George always told me that filmmaking was the art of compromise,” Daniels says.

“He didn’t always get what you set out for, or what you thought was good. But here he was again, willing to compromise and change his mind and say yes, 3PO actually is Anthony Daniels.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theatres Thursday.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing