Darth Vader actor David Prowse tried to land the lead role in Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN

David Prowse he is best known for playing Darth Vader George Lucasit is original Star Wars trilogy, but before that he was a well-known six-foot-tall bodybuilder. Prowse was some kind of beast!

Well, during his time playing Darth Vader, in 1978, Prowse made a big effort to try to get the role of Clark Kent/Superman in Richard Donnerit’s a classic Superman movie. In the end the part was successful Christopher Reevewho was absolutely perfect for the role, but in another universe, Prowse might have ended up in the role.

During a previous interview with Rock Cellar Magazine, Prowse was asked about his attempt to land Superman and said:

“Yes, I did everything to get the role of Superman, which obviously went to Christopher Reeve. I continued talking to various people, asking about the opportunity to play the role of Superman in this upcoming movie I had heard about. I would ask them, “What’s the problem?” and they said, “Well, you’re not American, are you?” I’d say, “What difference does it make?” Then they would say, ‘Oh no, you can’t have anything but an American like Superman!’”

This has obviously changed! But, at the time, Hollywood believed that Superman should be played by an American. When asked if his English accent had anything to do with his failure to play the role, he responded:

“No, it had nothing to do with the accent. The fact is, they had said that Superman is such an important part of the history of American comic folklore, and American audiences – who will account for 90% of the film’s revenue – simply wouldn’t accept anything other than an American Superman. So that was the end of it, so I gave up trying.

However, Prowse ended up training Christopher Reeve to prepare him physically for the role. Prowse was the boy who helped him up. Prowse spoke about it, saying:

“Yes, even though I wanted the role for myself (laughs). What happened was, one day I got a call from Dick Donner, the director, and he said, “Dave, we’ve got this guy called Christopher Reeve who’s going to play Superman,” and I said, “Great, how is ?” ?’ He said, “Oh, he’s about 6-foot-5 and about 160 pounds,” and I said, “What do you mean?” It looks like he’s really skinny.” So they asked for my help and said, “We’re going to have to build this.” I wanted to meet Christopher before I committed to training him, so I sat down with him and found him to be very, very nice. I spent six weeks with him before he put on the Superman costume, and in six weeks I gained 40 pounds on him! And when he put the suit on he looked good.”

So even though Prowse didn’t end up playing Superman, he played a very important role in preparing Reeve to step into the suit. In the end, I’m not sure if Prowse would have worked for the role of Superman, he didn’t look like Superman. What do you think?