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| Michael Carter, Return of the Jedi's Bib Fortuna |
“My agent rang,” Michael Carter tells us. “He said, you’ve got an interview for Blue Harvest, a sci fi film. I wasn’t keen, but went anyway. They offered me the job on the spot. I said no. I didn’t want to do it. Then I said okay. Then they said it was the third Star Wars film. I didn’t know anything about it. I was working in theatre, and wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. I went home and immediately told the kids. It was a 21 week shoot; I was there every day for the first 5 weeks. I thought, this is a bit weird. We spent time in preproduction, getting the outfit on; I felt like a big kid.”
Carter, who played Bib Fortuna in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, is the star guest at Leeds Comic Con in the Royal Armouries Museum. It’s Saturday 14th March, and it’s my second Creed Conventions event.
COMPARE: Did you know it would have the legacy it did?
MC: We knew it was Star Wars, but we didn’t think it was as big as it is. I don’t know why it has the effect on the imagination.
COMPARE: What’s the standalone moment for you?
MC: When people come up to you and say they remember you from when they were a kid. My son was terrified when I came on screen. He didn’t see me on film for 20 years.
Carter also played the subway victim in An American Werewolf in London.
MC: That was the first film I ever did. There was a flu pandemic at the time, and I got it 10 days before filming. The doctor told me ‘you cannot work.’ I lost 2+1/2 stone. I was very thin. I was young and fit, but ill. The special effects were amazing! It was great giving employment to animatronics and working with (director) John Landis. We did the cinema scene next.
COMPARE: Did it open doors for you?
MC: There wasn’t much of a cinema scene in the UK. I did a film called The Keep, a Michael Mann film. They knew I could do prosthetics. In Jedi, we managed to get makeup down to 59 minutes.
COMPARE: Who was the friendliest actor and who was the most cantankerous?
MC: Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) and Anthony Daniels (C3PO) were both very friendly. I had coffee with them. Nobody was cantankerous. A lot of people fainted in the costumes. I’d be saying, ‘Jabba Kabadda,’ and there’d be a terrible thump. Someone else had fallen. I got to the dressing room and got stuck in the outfit, and had to take the head off with a meat cleaver.
COMPARE: Who do you miss the most?
MC: Jeremy (Bulloch, Empire Strikes Back’s Boba Fett, died in 2020). He was one of the last J Arthur Rank contract actors.
COMPARE: He was in Carry on Talking. Tell me about getting into acting.
MC: I was the first person in The Crucible at my local theatre. You pick up stuff, scratching for the good work.
COMPARE: Any alumni from RADA? (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)
MC: Michael Kitchen (DC Chris Foyle in Foyle’s War, Bill Tanner in Goldeneye / The World is Not Enough, narrator on TV show Faking It) and David Bradley (Billy in Kes, the dad in After Life).
COMPARE: Which role are you most proud of?
MC: I was in Anthony and Cleopatra with Anthony Hopkins and Dame Judy Dench. That was something. I was on Broadway with Dustin Hoffman.
COMPARE: Anything you still want to pursue?
MC: No, I’m semi-retired.
COMPARE: Any plans for an autobiography?
MC: Some things you don’t want to say, ‘cause you’ll get sued.
The mic goes out to the audience. The first question: what was it like being turned into an action figure?
MC: One actor was going to sue Lucasfilm. He did, and got a payout; I didn’t dare. It’s kinda weird. One time a little old lady met me and said, ‘someone told me you were in Return of the Jedi. Can you sign this?’ It was me in a red cloak. I said, ‘don’t take this out of the package. It’s really rare.’ She had paid £5.
At this point, I managed to ask about Harrison Ford. Between the Star Wars films, he’d had a cameo in Apocalypse Now in ’79 as Cl. Lucas. Did he mention filming this during the Jedi shoot?
MC: Harrison was filming something else at the time. I was in 1 scene with him, but we didn’t talk.
Well then.
The last audience question goes to American Werewolf in London, in which Carter plays the first victim on the underground. He tells us that the scene was shot at 6am in a secret station that exists way below ground, underneath the actual station.
Michael Carter was the main draw for this convention, the other actors being people I wasn’t familiar with. Small venue, only stayed there 3 or so hours. Enjoyed it.
