Actor Michael Pennington performs in Moises Kaufman’s play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde at the Gielgud Theatre. (Photo by robbie jack/Corbis via Getty Images)
Corbis via Getty Images
Michael Pennington, a screen and stage actor whose roles included Death Star Commander Moff Jerjerrod in Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, has died.
Pennington died Sunday, according to The Telegraph in the U.K. He was 82.
Born Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington on June 7, 1943, in Cambridge, England, Pennington’s screen career kicked off in 1965 in a supporting role in the BBC miniseries The War of the Roses.
In Return of the Jedi, Pennington’s Moff Jerjerrod is confronted by Darth Vader (David Prowse/voice of James Earl Jones) over the lagging construction of Death Star II. At the end of the scene, a visibly rattled Moff Jerjerrod assures Darth Vader that his team will double their efforts in completing the new version of the planet-killing weapon, to which the Sith lord menacingly replies, “I hope so, commander, for your sake. The emperor is not as forgiving as I am.”
Pennington, who was also a member of the Royal Shakespeare Comany, compiled more than 70 screen roles during his career. In addition to Return of the Jedi, he starred opposite Meryl Streep’s U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 2011 biopic The Iron Lady, a role that earned Streep her third Oscar.
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