Stuart Freeborn, 1914–2013

last updated 8 January 2015

It was no coincidence that British makeup artist Stuart Freeborn bore a striking resemblance to his most famous creation—Yoda, the wise and rumpled sage of the Star Wars movies. “I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that I was comic, with all these little knobbles,” said Freeborn. “So I built myself in.” Freeborn swiftly assembled the diminutive Yoda out of wire, latex, and electronic circuits. “I had never modeled anything so quick,” he said, and he thought the finished creature was “a load of rubbish.” Star Wars creator George Lucas disagreed. When Freeborn unveiled Yoda, the director exclaimed, “That’s it! That’s just what I want!”

Like many middle-class children growing up in London in the 1920s and ’30s, Freeborn went to the cinema several times a week, said The Times (U.K.). Unlike most others, however, Freeborn went home and tried to re-create the movie makeup, “once even turning himself into Frankenstein’s monster.” At age 21, he made himself up to look like Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and drove around London, causing British newspapers to report that the African leader was visiting the capital. He sent the clippings and photographs to Britain’s newly established Denham Studios, which promptly hired him.

“Stars of every stripe were in and out of his makeup chair,” from Vivien Leigh to Marlene Dietrich, said The Guardian (U.K.). But his career really soared when he teamed up with director Stanley Kubrick in the 1960s. Freeborn designed the three different faces worn by Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, and spent two years crafting the ape-like creatures in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The hairy suits boasted numerous innovations, said the Los Angeles Times, “including a technique that enabled simian-suited actors to use their facial muscles to move their masks.” He advanced many of those tricks while working on the original Star Wars films, crafting dozens of bizarre aliens, including the hirsute Chewbacca and the giant, slug-like Jabba the Hutt. “His Star Wars creatures may be reinterpreted in new forms by new generations,” said Lucas, “but at their heart, they continue to be what Stuart created for the original films.”