Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis
CONTENTS
Foreword
Prologue: Expecting Someone Taller
Chapter One: E Eetee, Eetee Chiutatal Bok Ootu Ootu Chuu-Ock
Chapter Two: An Ewok Is Born
Chapter Three: Just Me and Princess Leia
Chapter Four: The Caravan of Courage
Wicket: Warwick Davis
Chapter Five: Return of the Ewok
Chapter Six: Starman in My Caravan
Chapter Seven: Skating for Spielberg
Chapter Eight: Heroes Come in All Sizes
Chapter Nine: Oh, Rats!
Chapter Ten: Hiii-Hoooooooo!
Chapter Eleven: Willow’s Shotgun Wedding
Chapter Twelve: Lep in the Hood
Chapter Thirteen: Love and Biscuits
Chapter Fourteen: Annabelle
Chapter Fifteen: The Little Menace
Chapter Sixteen: The Half Monty
Chapter Seventeen: Guess Who’s Back?
Chapter Eighteen: Pottering About
Chapter Nineteen: Luck of the Irish
Chapter Twenty: For the Love of Cheese
Chapter Twenty-One: Paranoid Android
Chapter Twenty-Two: A Little Extra
Chapter Twenty-Three: My Wonderful World
Epilogue: The Moral of the Story
Beyond the Epilogue: A New Beginning
The final word goes to my aged Aunt Jan
Acknowledgments
Inserts
WARWICK DAVIS
(The Author)
Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Warwick Davis. All rights reserved
Foreword copyright © 2009, 2011 by George Lucas. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
First published in Great Brtitain in 2010 by Aurum Press Ltd.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of material quoted in this book. If application is made in writing to the publisher, any omissions will be included in future editions.
Photo Credits: Unless otherwise stated, all images featured herein belong to the author’s personal collection and are used under authorization. Page iii, author image courtesy of Nina Hollington; pages iv–v, all images courtesy of Nina Hollington; pages 100–101, image courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd; pages 132–133, text courtesy of Chrissy Iley; pages 182–183, “Leprechaun” provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate; pages 222–223, image courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd; page 256, “Leprechaun” provided through the courtesy of Lionsgate; page 322, image courtesy of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant; pages 334–345, images courtesy of Ray Burmiston. Color insert: All images featured herein courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd, including all screen grabs from Return of the Ewok, ™ & © Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Mum and Dad – You gave me life
Nana Davis – You started it all
George Lucas – For all the opportunities
Sammy, Annabelle, Harrison, Lloyd and Baby George – You make me feel 10 feet tall
Love and magic . . . always x
FOREWORD
He was just a little guy when I first met him nearly three decades ago. But even at the age of eleven, and standing just two feet eleven inches tall, I could tell at our first meeting that Warwick Davis was not only agile, but full of life and spunk. Something about him cried out that he was a very special person, and in the years since as I’ve gotten to know Warwick as an actor and as a human being, I’m happy that my first instinct was correct.
It was his grandmother who heard that the Star Wars folks were holding auditions for people under four feet tall for Return of the Jedi – but it was Warwick who had the gumption and self-confidence to think that he could get a part. When I saw him in his tiny Ewok costume, and got to know him better, I started giving him more and more things to do. What struck me was how energetic he was, how enthusiastic – and very, very intelligent. When he got those extra pieces of business in the film, he did them really well, made them his own, and they looked great on camera. He may have started out as an extra, but he turned into a much more central character, Wicket W. Warrick, Ewok hero. He repeated that role in two made-for-television movies.
When Ron Howard and I decided to do Willow, it was really the experience of working with Warwick that gave me the confidence that we could do a film with not just a few dozen little people, but with a few hundred. I told Ron that Warwick was a very talented actor and could actually play the lead in a movie. After Ron talked to him and did a few screen tests, he agreed. Warwick worked very hard and turned in a great performance. He was all of seventeen.
I’ve done a number of movies with little people and have gotten to know some of them quite well. I’ve been asked why I’ve used little people as heroes. Perhaps part of it, deep down, is the fact that throughout high school I was always the shortest one in the class, so perhaps I instinctively took on the fantasy life of a little person who overcomes all obstacles. And part of it is my real-world desire to point the spotlight on the struggles of society’s downtrodden, whether they be different physically, mentally, ethnically, or even financially.
Warwick has already led an extraordinary life: actor, director, businessman and devoted husband and father. He has undergone tremendous physical and other challenges and has become an even stronger force of nature by overcoming them. As I’ve gotten to know Warwick over the years, there has been one defining quality that has always shone through: he’s a really good person. He’s smart, sensitive, and though
tful. He’s very talented, as his long list of notable movie and television credits will attest. He’s also fun to be around. And Warwick has gone – and continues to go – in many different and interesting directions, all of which have helped him accomplish a great number of goals. This book recounts just the first forty years of what I’m sure is going to continue to be an amazing life. In my book, for all that he has done and for his innate decency and integrity, he’s a true hero.
George Lucas, Skywalker Ranch 2009
Prologue
Expecting Someone Taller
February 3, 1970
My dad had been sitting with no little anxiety in the expectant fathers’ waiting room when he saw the doctor marching down the long corridor toward him.
The doctor stopped at the doorway and studied my father for a moment or two.
“Mr. Davis,” he said seriously, “would you please stand up?”
My father rose unsteadily.
“Hmmm,” the doctor continued in a thoughtful and slightly puzzled tone, a tone that suggested all was not as it should be. He frowned and looked my father up and down. “Walk to the door and back.”
“Excuse me?” Dad was understandably perplexed. He had been expecting the doctor to enter the room and say something along the lines of: “Congratulations, you’re the father of a healthy boy/girl,” and he would in return hand the doctor a cigar.
But in those days every single doctor was male and studied at the Macho-Man School of Medicine, where any leanings toward sensitivity, consideration, and empathy guaranteed you a Fail and a foot in the backside.
This was 1970, the year of cheesecloth and satin, when men were men and wore sideburns, perms, Brut, and gold medallions and did not, under any circumstances – unless they were wearing a white coat – witness childbirth.
“Walk to the door and back,” the doctor repeated impatiently, as if this was expected of all new fathers.
My dad did as he was told.
“You’re not unusually short, are you?” the doctor asked.
“Er . . .”
The doctor turned and started to leave the room.
“Excuse me!” my dad called after him. The doctor froze, leaning on the half-open door.
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
The doctor looked back at him for a moment and tilted his head as if deep in thought. “I’ve forgotten.” The door swung closed behind him.
At that moment the dinner trolley rattled past. Dad saw a healthy king-sized cockroach crawling happily out from under one of the plastic plates and swore that no child of his would ever be born in that hospital again.
It was touch and go for a while. The doctors didn’t know I was going to be born little and I had far too much anesthetic in my system (Mum had a Caesarean). Although I won this first round I was soon battling against pneumonia and was rushed by ambulance to Queen Mary’s special children’s hospital, my anxious parents following right behind.
A doctor suggested, rather portentously, that they christen me at the earliest opportunity. I was christened in the hospital on February 13 (my mum’s birthday).
But, despite the gloomy predictions made by the medical fraternity, and despite having to spend the first two months of my life in the hospital, I fought my way into the world. Eventually the doctors sat down with my mum and dad. This time they had a little bit more to say.
“Your son will be wheelchair-bound and dead by his teens, if he survives these first few months.”
This, as it turned out, was completely, utterly, and entirely incorrect.
Chapter One
E Eetee, Eetee Chiutatal Bok Ootu Ootu Chuu-Ocka
“Mum, who’s George Lucas?”
Practicing my “come hither” look.
A mini-motortrike would soon follow.
Ready for Little Chint Primary.
Sports day: Thanks to my waddle, the egg-and-spoon race became the “pick-up-the-egg-and-spoon” race.
Me, Mum, and my younger sister, Kim.
Just your average family – although I’m first to admit that the dog rodeo was a touch unusual.
Me, Kim, and Dad.
Was I really that small or is that just tall grass?
What would be the dream thing you’d most like to do?” Mum asked. I considered carefully. “Think about it, Warwick, anything you want. The most fantastic thing you could possibly imagine.”
I was eleven years old and Mum was picking me up from school. Suddenly I had it. Of course! It was obvious. “Drive a go-kart!” I exclaimed.
Mum looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Come on, Warwick, what do you love more than anything else?” Hmm . . . tricky. What could possibly be better than driving a go-kart?
I’d come a long way since Mum and Dad had brought me home from the hospital. I’d grown from strength to strength – although not in height. But what I lacked in inches I made up for in explosive energy. I was a handful, albeit a small one.
While my size has of course played a huge part in my life,b it has never been an excuse. Indeed it came to be one of my greatest assets (alongside my charm, wit, and intellect, of course).
My size, however, had given my parents plenty to worry about for the first few years of my life, medically speaking at least. When I was a baby, my head was out of proportion to the rest of my body, and for a time the doctors were concerned that it might become too heavy for my neck, but thankfully my body gradually caught up.
My legs proved to be more problematic. I’d been born with talipes (club foot), which meant both my feet were turned inward and I stood on my ankles as I walked.
I had to wear splints every night to try to straighten them, but this had limited success, so I went for a major operation to correct this when I was two years old. The surgeons cut the back of my legs from my ankle to my knee, undid all the tendons in my legs like the shoelaces in a knee-length boot, then retied them again so I could put my feet flat on the ground.
While I was in the hospital, I was photographed several times – the doctors said they’d never seen anything like me before. I hated it; it made me feel like an exhibit in a freak show. My parents didn’t like it, either, but they felt they had to go along with the men in white coats and imagined this would help the doctors advance their knowledge. Granddad, “Poppa,” tried to comfort me by calling me his “little champ.”
Although I came home with casts on both my legs and walked like a stick man for six weeks, I refused to let them hold me back. I climbed everywhere I possibly could and took particular delight in giving my parents palpitations by balancing on chairs and tables.
It was while I was in the hospital that the doctors told Mum and Dad that I had achondroplasia, the most common genetic cause of dwarfism.c To some extent, it was reassuring for them to know what it was that had made me small. My parents found this time in my childhood especially difficult but they resolved that they would make sure I lived just like any other child would. The only concessions to my short stature at home were a lowered light switch in my bedroom and my very own sink.
My dad was an insurance man who worked at Lloyd’s in the City of London, following in the footsteps of his father. He was proud of what he did but felt the pressure of the city and the long commute from our home in Tadworth, Surrey. Although it was all he knew, he had secret fantasies of becoming a lumberjack. His chance came when the insurance market went haywire in the long recession of the late 1970s. He bought the finest chainsaw available and a checkered shirt, marched out to the woods, and started cutting down trees. After a while, people started to pay him.
My father has a wicked sense of humor; I think this may have influenced some of his many successful moneymaking schemes, one of which involved selling land to the Americans. He bought a small field and sold it off by the square foot so that Americans could own a piece of England (he’d mail them the certificate of ownership as proof).
His scheme has since been repeated, with some people even selling portions of the Moon. I don
’t know quite how that’s possible but anyone who bought a square foot of land from my father actually still owns that piece of land.
Our household was firmly conservative. No elbows were allowed on the dining table, where we always ate dinner, and we had to finish whatever was put on our plates. Kim, my stubborn sister, once spent four hours shepherding a dozen or so peas around her plate after discussions about the edibility of peas got totally out of control.