Five stories about Stuart Freeborn that aren't made up

Make-up artist who created Yoda, Chewbacca and Stanley Kubrick's apes has died at the age of 98

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STUART FREEBORN, the British make-up artist who created the Star Wars characters Yoda, Chewbacca and Jabba the Hutt, has died at the age of 98. Born in east London, he spent six decades in the film industry and worked on seminal movies including the 1948 version of Oliver Twist and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Here are five things you may not know about the man described as "the grandfather of modern make-up design".

He got his first job by impersonating Ethiopia's last emperor Haile Selassie: In 1935, The Times reported that Selassie had been seen driving a car in London. It was in fact Freeborn, with "nose, beard and make-up attached," writes his former assistant Nick Maley. Freeborn was temporarily detained by police, but used the newspaper report of his escapade to land a job as a make-up artist at Denham Studios in Buckinghamshire.

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