Character actor Richard LeParmentier died 15 April 2013. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 16 July 1946, he’ll be best remembered for a his very brief role in the Star Wars series. As Admiral Motti, LeParmentier was Darth Vader’s first victim in the series, choked by Vader’s control of the Force for his disturbing lack of faith. The part was LeParmentier’s fifth professional role. According to a remembrance on the official Star Wars site, “LeParmentier was one of the many actors who read for the part of Han Solo, but he was originally hired to play a Mos Eisley bureaucrat named Montross. Just prior to the start of production of Star Wars, this small part was cut from the film. ‘Then about a month later,’ LeParmentier told Star Wars Insider magazine in 1998, ‘the casting director phoned my agent and said, “We’d like Richard to read for the part of Admiral Motti,” so they sent me another script and I read it, and I thought, ‘Well, okay, it’s two scenes at least, so I’ll do that.'”

In a statement to the Associated Press, LeParmentier’s family said, “He absolutely loved traveling the world and meeting his friends and fellow Stars Wars fans.”

His other genre roles include: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Superman II (1980), Space: 1999 (1977), The People That Time Forgot (1977), and Rollerball (1975).

Later in his career, he also worked as a screenwriter for British television, where he lived from the 1970s. In the 1980s, he was briefly married to actress Sarah Douglas, with whom he shared the screen in several movies.