C. Andrew Nelson - The Dark Side

C. Andrew Nelson has played the character of Darth Vader for Lucasfilm since 1994 for film, television, print, commercials, computer games, and live events.

Andrew has spent more time performing in the official Vader costume than any other actor, even surpassing that of Dave Prowse, Bob Anderson, Sebastian Shaw, and Hayden Christensen combined.

The longest continual time that Andrew has ever spent in the Vader costume is twenty-one hours which occurred during a simultaneous commercial and print ad shoot. Mind you, he did not have to keep the mask on that whole time, but he had on all the rest of it.

In 1996, Andrew became the only actor to ever officially portray both Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker when he provided the voice of Luke for LucasArts’ X-Wing Collector’s CD game.

Along with fellow artist Michael Levine, Andrew was the first to create digital lightsaber effects for a live-action Star Wars project. The pair were called upon to develop the technique for the full-motion video cutscenes in the Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II game from LucasArts, six years before the very same technique (albeit using different software) was employed at Industrial Light + Magic for the film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

For close-up shots in the Jedi Knight game, Andrew doubled as the hands of the dark jedi character Jerec and as the hands and feet of lead character Kyle Katarn.

While working on a Naboo landscape as a matte painter at Industrial Light + Magic on The Phantom Menace, Andrew incorporated into the image a cloud that looked surprisingly like his grandmother. It went virtually unnoticed.

During post-production on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Andrew worked for two months on a very labor-intensive effects shot involving the total removal of a puppeteer, only to have the entire shot itself removed from the film.

Intrigued? Want to know more about any of this? Drop Andrew or his management a message and maybe they will clue you in on the full story.