Michael Pennington, Shakespeare and Star Wars actor, dies aged 82

The Life and Legacy of Michael Pennington

The actor Michael Pennington, known for his Shakespearean work and his role in the original Star Wars trilogy, has died aged 82, his agent has said.

Shakespearean Career and Achievements

Pennington, who is listed as an honorary associate artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company, also founded and ran the English Shakespeare Company alongside the theatre director Michael Bogdanov.

• He played Hamlet, Mercutio and Macbeth, as well as King Lear, Richard II and Henry V.
• He appeared as Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Angelo, Leontes and Jack Cade across a 60-year career.
• He directed Twelfth Night in the UK, Tokyo and Chicago and the Hamlet Project for the National Theatre Bucharest.

Tributes and Reflections

His fellow actor Miriam Margolyes remembered him as an “old friend, from Cambridge days, a very fine actor, brilliant, wise, clear”. She said: “I am sad beyond measure,” adding: “Bless your dear memory, old chum.”

Giving the 2004 British Academy Shakespeare lecture, Pennington described how he had first developed a fascination with the playwright’s work. “Like trying to establish the moment when one first stood up and walked, it is hard for many of us to remember when Shakespeare first entered our lives; but my own memory is extremely precise. Shakespearean verse hit me like a hammer when I was 11.

Impact on Theatre and Film

Pennington had a long-running association with Bogdanov, who cast him as the lead in Seán O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman in 1980, and in Tolstoy’s Strider: The Story of a Horse, three years later.

He worked with Dame Judi Dench and her husband, Michael Williams, starring in King Lear together in the 1970s, among other productions.

Alongside his stage work, Pennington appeared in more than 70 onscreen productions – including the third instalment in the original Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi, as the Death Star commander Moff Jerjerrod.

Cause of Death and Final Tribute

Pennington’s agent, Lesley Duff, said: “After a long and wonderful life and career, Michael Pennington died peacefully in the early hours of Thursday 7 May at Denville Hall.”