by Edward Gross
RICK MCCALLUM
There are never star vehicles in the Star Wars films. That isn’t what drives the films at all—and we didn’t need it, especially with the character of Anakin. It’s better to meet him and have as little baggage as possible attached, because then you can watch that person just purely as someone out of nowhere. Hayden was a wonderfully decent, incredible kid, unbelievably focused. But there was something—I wouldn’t say damaged, but there is something in there that’s really interesting, something in his look, something about him that you don’t quite understand. And if you use it, it makes things very interesting, because he’s such a likable and decent guy.
I think we all saw different things in him. I don’t think we all agreed on what we saw in him, but ultimately, we came to the same decision that he was the one. I didn’t necessarily see the dark side in him and I find that interesting. George and Robin [Gurland] could see that easier than I could. You know, you could easily come to the conclusion that, “Oh, yeah, I see the bad seed in him and what he could become.” But it was much more complicated than that. It’s the process of being Anakin Skywalker and the eventual fall to the dark side that I think requires an enormous amount of acting ability, and Hayden has that. He has infinite potential. It was pretty much a slam dunk. We didn’t know that until we saw him and tested him, but once he did the test, it was pretty obvious.
GEORGE LUCAS
We saw hundreds and hundreds of people. You work very hard to cast your picture. You look for the very best, qualified actors—the ones with the best craft and real talent—and then you find people who fit into that role as you envision it to be. In this case, we went through lots of testing with many people, and finally we brought it down to a few. I then tested them with Natalie Portman to see what the chemistry was, because, after all, this is a love story.
NATALIE PORTMAN
George asked my opinion and my opinion was Hayden. I don’t know if he was thinking along the same lines as I was or how much he took my opinion.
GEORGE LUCAS
The thing that got Hayden the role was that—beyond being an extremely talented actor—he had this boyish quality that was necessary for this impatient young kid, who’s very similar to Luke. Anakin’s roughly the same age in Clones that Luke was in A New Hope. Hayden also had a great capacity to have a brooding dark side. He’s very good with anger and those kinds of qualities—which aren’t only important to this film, but even more important in the next one. So, I was casting for two films and for the arc of this character, not just how he behaves in Clones.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
It was a process that ran four or five months. First, it was just a meeting with the casting director, Robin Gurland. I flew myself into Los Angeles—I was in Vancouver doing a TV show, Higher Ground, at the time. I went to meet with Robin and that was an hour-and-a-half videotaped conversation, not about Star Wars, but more about my approach to how I work. George saw that and I was supposed to fly out to L.A. again, because that’s where he was going to meet with twelve of the kids whom he had seen on tape and liked. I was invited to that, but I couldn’t go because of scheduling commitments to my show. Three weeks to a month later, I got a call saying that if I wanted to go out to Skywalker Ranch, he would meet with me on my own there. I did that and met with him. Again, we didn’t talk about anything specifically related to Star Wars. It was just a chat. A month and a half after that, I went in and did a screen test with Natalie Portman. And that was it, really.
I was on Cloud Nine for about a week, and then it settled in that I had to actually play the part. How I was going to do that was sort of daunting, considering George could have had his pick of actors. So, I got to work and tried not to project my thoughts too much about why I was playing the part or what it was about me that George thought I could bring to the role. I just tried to figure out the best way. That was really where my focus was throughout the entire filming process, trying to break the character down.
RICK MCCALLUM
It was one of those weird prophecies when you’re casting, a dynamic that happens. The minute he walked in the room, he and Natalie just clicked. Although he was very nervous, there was something about the way he read. It was one of those things. It’s so subjective. The way he read the part, the way he got along with Natalie, this thing that’s in him—it just worked. We just knew.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
The first time I asked George about who was going to play Anakin, it was interesting. He said, “I found this kid with this great face and great character about him. He has an edge that lets you know he can be Darth Vader.” I said, “Are you serious?” When I met Hayden, I thought he was a nice kid. Fortunately for him, the majority of his scenes were with Ewan and Natalie, two people who had been through the process and understand the seriousness with which we approach the job. He had a chance to watch them and how they came to work every day and did what they did.
* * *
Christopher Lee entered the Star Wars universe with much the same grandeur and gravitas as Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing had in the original trilogy. Lee’s personal history is in many ways more interesting than the characters he played on-screen. Born May 22, 1922, to father Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Trollope Lee and his wife, Countess Estelle Marie, Lee’s childhood was one of high-end schools and grand occasions with Europe’s elite. Acting was an early passion: he appeared in several plays as a child, and the world of fiction was always near to hand. Lee’s cousin was future James Bond author Ian Fleming, and he attended school with actor Patrick Macnee and studied under famed ghost story writer M. R. James while attending Eton. While his education at Eton and Oxford was focused on the Classics, he never lost his love of the theater.
With the onset of the war with Germany in 1939, and his family now penniless, Lee enrolled in the military academy and volunteered to fight for the Finnish army against the Soviet Union during the Winter War. During the next few years, Lee would move from country to country, and assignment to assignment, eventually working within the intelligence service on assignments he would refuse to speak of to his dying day. After the war he spent a brief period hunting Nazi war criminals across war-torn Europe before finally returning home, deciding to leave the bloodshed of war behind in favor of becoming an actor.
The next decade, he slowly made his way up the ranks of the British film world before his first breakthrough role in Hammer Films’ 1957 film The Curse of Frankenstein, alongside future Grand Moff Tarkin actor Peter Cushing. Hammer’s films were known for using and reusing actors, and Christopher Lee, with his “stiff-upper-lip” British mannerisms combined with a man who’s seen much of the world and remembers what he’s seen, made him the perfect match for roles in Hammer’s Dracula and Frankenstein franchises, and many other gothic horror films of the time. For the next several decades, Lee would attract acclaim for roles in various Sherlock Holmes films; as James Bond villain Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974); and for his role in the horror cult classic The Wicker Man (1973). His career, which seemed to fall into B-villain roles and the occasional guest spot, saw a major resurgence in the early 2000s with the role of Saruman in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy—as well as that of Count Dooku in George Lucas’s Attack of the Clones (2002), Revenge of the Sith (2005), and Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008).
CHRISTOPHER LEE
(actor, “Count Dooku”)
To be Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Dooku in Star Wars … it’s a wonderful experience for me. Between them, these are six stories in the two greatest and most successful franchises, which is not something you really expect at my age. I consider myself very fortunate.
RICK MCCALLUM
Christopher Lee is someone who came out of the blue for me. It was a choice that Robin and George made. George has always liked his work, always wanted to work with him, and thought this was the chance and that he was the perfect person for the part. I was looking for som
ebody who was traditionally more evil, but it made sense to me. We worked with him on Young Indy and really enjoyed the experience. So, it was a great idea and he is fantastic.
CHRISTOPHER LEE
My agent called and said, “George Lucas is going to call you from Australia in connection with the next Star Wars film.” The script was sent to me and then George called and said, “I’m doing another Star Wars film and I would very much like to have you in it. We’ll have a lot of fun.” That was what really did it for me, that three-letter word—fun. That’s so immensely important. You can work extremely hard, you can give the best performance you can, you can satisfy the director, the producer, the public, and yourself, and you can have fun doing all that. That sense of fun has disappeared in the making of most pictures today, and to such a degree that it’s quite depressing. It’s all “time is money” now. But there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have a laugh with the director or anyone else on a film, for that matter.
GEORGE LUCAS
With Christopher Lee, I was looking for a villain, a Sith Lord who wasn’t Darth Maul, who wasn’t Darth Vader, but who was more elegant, who had been a Jedi, who was more sinister than he was scary. I was getting away from the Frankenstein Monster kind of character and into the more elegant Dracula brand of character. I realized I was setting myself up to go there, and I dared not go there. But I wanted a more sophisticated kind of villain. Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the Empire is actually valid. It’s all valid. So, Chris plays it as, “Is he really a villain or is he just someone who is disenchanted and trying to make things right?”
CHRISTOPHER LEE
I would be more inclined to describe Dooku as a person, but I think most people would consider him a villain. He’s not, however, your traditional black-hearted villain, although he’s extremely dangerous and lethal and pretty cold-blooded about everything that goes on. But the most dangerous people are the ones who are casual about everything. Dooku is quite casual about the things he does, which leads to trouble for other people. He appears to be casual, though he really isn’t.
Dooku’s a former Jedi, so at some point in his life he was a valorous and honest knight, but he became disillusioned with the establishment and decided he could do better. So, he joined forces with other people. I don’t think it’s quite clear whether he wants to take over, as Saruman does in The Lord of the Rings, or whether he’s simply obeying his master. By the way, I would say that there’s really no comparison between Saruman and Dooku, except that they’re both seeking power. Saruman wants to be number one and Dooku, as I said, is certainly quite content to be number two in this story.
RICK MCCALLUM
Christopher Lee is someone we hired before The Lord of the Rings and he was perfect for the part. There’s a baggage that comes with Christopher and his relationship to this role was perfect. It really didn’t have much to do with his connection to Peter Cushing. We needed somebody who had a great, great voice, who came with a subtext of menace. And Christopher Lee fulfills that.
CHRISTOPHER LEE
We sat around and talked, the members of the cast. It was the same thing on The Lord of the Rings and Sleepy Hollow. That was the great joy for me of working on these films. You give your best when George Lucas, Peter Jackson, or Tim Burton says, “Okay, now we’re going to shoot,” but during rehearsals, during breaks in the shooting, they encouraged you to talk, to tell jokes and to relax.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON
Talking with Christopher Lee was a real defining moment. When I stepped into that space and say that line, “This party’s over,” I almost wanted to stop and say, “How are you doing, Mr. Lee?” It was like, “Ooh, Fu Manchu.” He’s a very cool man.
* * *
Besides being the father of the young Boba Fett (who would be an iconic part of the original trilogy), Jango Fett is a bounty hunter whose DNA serves as the basis of the clone army introduced in Attack of the Clones. Playing the character is Temuera Morrison, whose credits prior to the Star Wars film include Once Were Warriors (1994), Barb Wire (1996), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), Vertical Limit (2000), and Crooked Earth (2001). Morrison returned to portray his son, Boba Fett, in The Mandalorian and its spin-off, The Book of Boba Fett.
TEMUERA MORRISON
(actor, “Jango Fett”)
To be honest with you, I really didn’t know anything about Jango Fett or Boba Fett or Star Wars. I don’t know what happened to me in the late seventies and early eighties with the whole Star Wars saga. I guess I was in New Zealand trying to find jobs. I had a lot of jobs, actually, and little time to see the Star Wars movies. So, I didn’t know who Jango Fett was and, when Robin said, “Look, you’re playing this Fett character”—I think she said Boba Fett’s father—all I comprehended at the time was Boba Fett. I went, “Yeah, yes, yes,” but in the same breath I was wondering, “Who the hell is that?”
GEORGE LUCAS
Boba Fett had a connection to the stormtroopers. I sort of built him out of the stormtroopers and I knew the stormtroopers were clones. Exactly what that relationship was I hadn’t really established yet. I knew Boba was a clone, but I didn’t know how all of that fit together. I knew that the clones were made out of a bounty hunter and when I got to this story, I thought, “Well, gee, the best bounty hunter is Boba Fett. And rather than him maybe being a clone, he could be the originator of the clones.” Most of the pieces were there, but I actually put them all together in this one.
TEMUERA MORRISON
Everybody told me, “Boba Fett is one of the most popular characters around,” though, and so that’s when I got excited. But I didn’t use what I saw of Jeremy Bulloch as any kind of reference. When I got to the set, I just did what came naturally and asked what time lunch was.
George didn’t say too much about the character. He just told me, “Stand over there and look that way. Look up there. And look over there.” I just tried to hit the mark where he told me to stand. He also told me to relax a little bit. Initially, during my first scene, it was quite intimidating because of the scale of the sets and the enormity of the production.
My first scene on my first day was with Ewan McGregor, when he walks into my apartment as Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was very intimidating, but fortunately for me, I knew some of the crew guys from The Island of Dr. Moreau. That put me partly at ease, and then George was very nice and cordial. He said, “Just relax” and told me, “You’re like the olive grower.” Those were his words, actually. What he meant was that, for Jango, it should be like just another day growing olives. Jango should be relaxed and think that it’s no big deal that this Jedi Knight is here. I’m just trying to put him off the trail. So it was intimidating, because of the sets and meeting George for the first time on the set and there being hundreds of people around. Man, I’m surprised I looked any good. I didn’t find the character interesting. It was all in the costume. That was the only interesting thing about him.
* * *
For Natalie Portman, her return as Padmé was a demonstration of her maturation from The Phantom Menace, not just as an actress, but in life as well. This, of course, would be reflected in her portrayal of the character.
RICK MCCALLUM
Natalie Portman was fifteen when she started on Episode I. She was nineteen on Episode II. She had gone to her first year at Harvard. She had friends of her own and her parents weren’t around, so it was a totally different thing for her. She was a whole different person. Imagine being fifteen years old and being the queen, the hairpiece, and the costumes … Now she gets to wear sexy costumes and is more attuned to who she is and what she wants to be as a person. Her life was balanced. She had a great academic career, so she didn’t take stardom or any of that seriously on any level. But it freed her with her work so that was really fantastic.
* * *
For the returning Anthony Daniels, Attack of the Clones presented a different sort of opportunity to play Threepio. As init
ially conceived, Threepio was to still be in his “naked” wire state, as he was last seen in The Phantom Menace, only to finally have a metal covering put on by Padmé while Anakin was in search of the Tusken Raiders. Lucas eventually scrapped the idea, and reshot the footage of Threepio with only the gray metal covering. However, during the initial shoot, Anthony Daniels was able to learn a new skill in the art of creating Threepio.
ANTHONY DANIELS
I not only played Threepio on Attack of the Clones, but I also handled his puppeteering. I said I would like to do it. On Phantom Menace, somebody else did it while they listened to me saying my lines. The problem with that is, if you’ve ever watched someone on TV who is wearing an earpiece and doing a remote, there’s always a little satellite time delay and a bit of brain-shifting going on. Though much of that was corrected in postproduction on Menace, there was a sense of it not being me or, in a way, not being Threepio. So, I told Rick McCallum and George that I would like to try it. I didn’t know if I could do it, even though I had done some puppeteering on The Empire Strikes Back. I did all of the stuff when Threepio was in pieces, but that involved old-fashioned tricks—like me kneeling through a piece of furniture so it looked like I didn’t have any legs, or me being half-dressed with my arm going up C-3PO’s chest and into his head, where I acted like a kind of ventriloquist. They were Victorian melodrama tricks and that was fun, because it wasn’t just a normal performance.
