Don Austen

Donald Austen is an English puppeteer who worked in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and councillor of Glyndon Ward, UK.

Austen began working for the Jim Henson creature shop in 1986, in movies like Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors, where he was one of the main puppeteers, like David Alan Barclay, Sue Dacre and David Greenaway.

He became a valuable puppeteer for other blockbuster movies in the following years, such as Who Framed Roger Rabbitt (1988) or Roal Dahl's The Witches (1990).

He was then to join the exclusive Muppet club on the Henson factory. He would be a puppeteer for two Muppet movies: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and The Muppet Treasure Island (1996). His character or characters in the second one are unknown, but it is known that, in the first one, he performed both the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Between these two films, he was also a puppeteer for TV series Live and Kicking: The Leprechauns and What's Up Doc?.

On 1999, he was hand-picked by master puppeteer Frank Oz to help him portray Yoda in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. For this complex puppet, Oz would need three helpers, including Austen, David Greenaway and Kathy Smee.

After doing this, he would then star in Jim Henson's pre-school TV series The Hoobs, acting as the character Iver. He would be nominated to the Gemini Award for three consecutive years, although unfortunately he had lost the three times to

Since 2005, Austen can be seen in another pre-school TV series, Ministry of Mayhem, acting as the little creature called Scratch.