Anthony Daniels

Anthony Daniels (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor and mime artist best known for embodying the iconic protocol droid C‑3PO across eleven Star Wars films. Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, he is the son of a plastics‑company executive and attended Giggleswick School before briefly studying law at university, a path he abandoned to pursue amateur dramatics and later enroll at Rose Bruford College, from which he graduated in 1974. After college he worked for the BBC Radio Drama Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain, experiences that honed his vocal and physical performance skills and led to an audition with George Lucas for the original Star Wars film. Though initially hesitant, Daniels accepted the role and became the physical performer inside the gold‑plated suit while also providing the character’s voice, a dual contribution he would repeat in every subsequent theatrical installment except Solo: A Star Wars Story, where he appears as a different character. Beyond the main saga, he has voiced C‑3PO in numerous animated series, radio dramas, video games, and theme‑park attractions, and even lent his voice to the 2014 The Lego Movie. His other acting credits include voicing Legolas in Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings (1978), a recurring role in the British crime series Prime Suspect, and a cameo as a priest in the cult horror comedy I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990). Daniels has also shared his expertise as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center and authored the memoir I Am C‑3PO: The Inside Story in 2019. A lifelong fan of science‑fiction, he once walked out of 2001: A Space Odyssey only to later recognize it as a masterpiece, a testament to his evolving appreciation of the genre.