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Legendary 'Star Wars' makeup artist Stuart Freeborn dies at 98

Legendary 'Star Wars' makeup artist Stuart Freeborn dies at 98

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stuart freeborn (starwars.com)
stuart freeborn (starwars.com)

Stuart Freeborn, the pioneering makeup artist behind Yoda, Chewbacca, Jabba the Hutt, and the Ewoks, has died at the age of 98, reports the BBC. George Lucas said that the self-taught Freeborn was "already a makeup legend when he started on Star Wars," a fact borne out by his work on the "Dawn of Man" sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the three different faces he created for Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove. In a radio interview with the BBC, Europe’s pre-eminent makeup artist explained how he bucked his parents’ wishes in order to try and make a career in stage and film. "My father was an insurance broker at Lloyd’s, and he was determined to get me into the office… I didn’t want to spend my life in an office, I felt I was different," he said.