Warwick Davis

Warwick Ashley Davis (born February 3, 1970, Epsom, Surrey, England, UK) is an actor noted for being short&mdash;he is three feet six inches (about one meter) tall. He is probably best known as the title character in Willow, Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter films, and a murderous leprechaun in the long-running series of horror films of the same name. Warwick Davis also plays the body of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.



Other notable roles include his first film role as Wicket the Ewok, who is befriended by Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. A little known fact is that during production on the film, he made a movie of his own as Wicket. It was a mockumentary made with help from Return of the Jedi's first assistant director, David Tomblin. The unreleased film was a fictional look at his decision to become an actor and act in the film and his transformation into Wicket the Ewok. He continued the role as Wicket officially in the made-for-TV movies Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. He also had four brief uncredited appearances in The Phantom Menace&mdash;one as W. Wald, the young Rodian friend of Anakin Skywalker (i.e., the same race as Greedo); the other is Weazel, one of the gamblers at the podrace. Davis also performs a cameo as a "Tatooine street trader", and doubled Yoda in some of his "walking" scenes (although Yoda still was voiced by Frank Oz).

In addition to his acting career, Davis is the co-founder of a talent agency (Willow Management, founded in 1995) that specialises in representing actors under five feet tall. His agency also recently (2004) began representing actors over seven feet tall.

Warwick is married and has two children. His wife, Samantha (b. 1971) has achrondroplasia, as do his children Annabelle (b. 1998) and Harrison (b. 2003). Unlike most dwarves (70%) who have a condition called achrondroplasia, Warwick's dwarfism is caused by an extremely rare genetic condition called spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita. On being a little person, Warwick has said the only real drawback to being small was the associated health problems. Of his own dwarfism (SED), Warwick has said "As you get older, you can suffer from painful hips, and our joints wear a lot quicker than for people of average height."