Claire Davenport

Claire Davenport (1933-2002) was the actress who did Yarna D'al Gargan (The "Fat Dancer") in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

Davenport was born on April 24, 1933 in Sale, Cheshire, England, UK. She began acting in 1961 with theater role in Caesar and Cleopatra, on the Playhouse Theatre, Oxford (She acted as Ftatateeta).

Soon after that, she began making guest appearances in TV series and acting as human background in movies; both activities would cover her career for the whole 1960s and the early 1970s (including a masseuse role in Blake Edwards' The Return of the Pink Panther, 1975; and a succesfully repeated role on the series On the Buses).

She would also make a guest appearance in British sitcom Fawlty Towers, where the following was said of her:


 * Davenport was a larger than life character actress who worked with the great and the good of British Comedy. Claire Davenport was a perfect vehicle for humour based on innuendo, farce and sometimes downright smut.

Davenport continued with guest appearances in TV series and movies during the late 1970s, including two roles in George and Mildred (1976 and 1978). She also acted as "Auntie Conne" in Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch representation of Frozen Assets, on 1979.

After this success, she also played theater in 1980s, particularly the play Ubi Roi, and also appeared in David Lynch's Elephant Man (1980), alongside with other actors in the Star Wars saga like Gilda Cohen (Cantina patron), Harry Fielder (Death Star guard) and William Morgan Shepard (voice actor for Force Commander)

She then did her non-line appearance in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, being credited as "Fat Dancer". Further novels give this character a name, Yarna D'al Gargan, and a background as one of Jabba the Hutt's favorites.

After her slight appearance in Star Wars, Davenport returned to her usual guest roles in TV series, including one role in Remington Steele and a mini-series, Freud (1984).

She would return to movies only twice: Derek Jarman's drama War Requiem (1989, Laurence Olivier's last movie) and Sune Lund-Sørensen's comedy Camping (1990). She would however act on TV series Smell of Mortimer & Reeves (1993), and do a last appearance in theater with the play On the Air (1998), alongside two of the actors in her scene of Return of the Jedi: Audience Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett) and other dancer Femi Taylor (Oola).

This would be Davenport's last public appearance, as she died on March 4, 2002, of a renal failure.