LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 27: Michael Pennington during the unveiling of a new plaque commemorating her friend and fellow actor Sir John Gielgud on Cowley Street in Westminster on April 27, 2017 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images)
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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. His cause of death was not given.
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. A year before, he joined England’s Royal Shakespeare Company as a bit player, according to The Telegraph.
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In 1983’s Return of the Jedi, Pennington’s Moff Jerjerrod is confronted by Darth Vader (David Prowse/voice of James Earl Jones) with concerns from Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) 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 longtime member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, compiled more than 70 screen roles during his career. In addition to Return of the Jedi, Pennington 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 overall Oscar and second statuette for Best Actress.
Michael Pennington Was Okay With His ‘Star Wars’ Association
While Michael Pennington appeared in well over 100 roles on stage and screen throughout his career, the one appearance that followed him throughout was his turn as Moff Jerjerrod in Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
According to The Telegraph, Pennington once told an interviewer of his role in the beloved Star Wars classic, “Let’s not make too much of it, but I’ve done 20 years of plays since, and people still write for autographs, saying, ‘If you ever do any more acting, please let us know.’”
Among Pennington’s Shakespearean stage credits were the classics Hamlet, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Coriolanus, The Winter’s Tale, Macbeth and King Lear.
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Apart from his Shakespeare work, Pennington starred in several other stage productions, including The Madness of George III and Anton Chekhov, a one-man play where he starred in the title role. In addition to his stage work, Pennington authored nearly a dozen books, largely dedicated to the acting craft.
On screen, Pennington largely appeared in British film and television productions, although some of the movies and shows made their way across the pond to the U.S. As such, Pennington appeared in guest roles in the crime drama Waking the Dead, which aired on BBC America and the historical drama The Tudors, which aired on Showtime.
Pennington’s last credited role was in 2022, when he voiced The Trust — a sentient quantum computer — in five episodes of Season 2 of executive producer and director Ridley Scott’s HBO Max sci-fi series Raised by Wolves.
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