David Charles Prowse MBE (1 July 1935 – 28 November 2020) was an English actor, bodybuilder and weightlifter. He portrayed Darth Vader (voiced by American actor James Earl Jones) in the original Star Wars trilogy and a manservant in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. In 2015, he starred in two documentaries concerning his Darth Vader role, one entitled The Force's Mouth which included Prowse voicing Darth Vader's lines with studio effects applied for the first time, and the other entitled I Am Your Father covering the subject of fallout between Prowse and Lucasfilm.
Prior to his role as Vader, Prowse had established himself as a super-hero figure in the United Kingdom as the Green Cross Man in the Green Cross Code road safety public information aimed at children and young people.
David Charles Prowse was born on 1 July 1935 in Bristol. He is the son of Gladys (née Burt) and Charles Prowse. He was brought up on the Southmead housing estate in Bristol, gaining a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School. Prowse was tall, standing 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), and developed an interest in bodybuilding. His early jobs included a bouncer at a dance hall, where he met his future wife, and a helper at Henleaze Swimming Pool. Following his successes from 1961 in the British heavyweight weightlifting championship, he left Bristol in 1963 to work for a London weightlifting company.

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