Warwick: I'm calling the shots

At 40 years of age, Warwick Davis already has a screen CV that would make most British actors green with envy, having appeared alongside some of the biggest Hollywood names in a string of box office smashes. Now, having just completed an autobiography charting his life and career to date, along with an upcoming primetime television show, he tells Paul Carter that the pace of his career shows no sign of abating

Remarkably, it was as an 11-year-old boy back in 1981 when Warwick landed his first big break largely thanks to his grandmother, who heard a radio advert in the London area calling for short people to appear in a new film being made at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. And what a break it was. The film in question happened to be Return Of The Jedi, the third instalment of what remains the biggest movie franchise of all time – Star Wars.

“[My Grandmother] called my Mum and told her she’d heard this advert and what did my Mum think,” explains Warwick.

“As soon as my Mum heard the words Star Wars she thought ‘oh well Warwick’s going to love this!’ as she knew I was a huge fan of the movie.

“She called up the studio and they said we were actually too late because they had been inundated with calls from people. I don’t know what she said, whether she offered them cash, but they had a change of heart and said ‘bring Warwick into the studio, and we’ll meet him’.

“So I went up to the studios full of enthusiasm and excitement and they took one look at me, then I only stood 2 feet 11 inches tall, and they said ‘great you’re going to make a good Ewok, go and get yourself measured up for a costume’.”

More good fortune was to fall Warwick’s way. Actor Kenny Baker, who already played the role of robot R2-D2 in the series, was due to take the role of the lead Ewok, Wicket.

However, Baker fell ill the day shooting was due to take place, meaning the young Warwick was thrust into the limelight, albeit beneath a furry costume.

“Basically, when you watch Wicket, that’s an 11-year-old boy on the Star Wars set – that inquisitive nature, that kind of wide eyed wonderment which came through in my performance really,” he says.

Twenty nine years later, it is clear that Warwick’s enthusiasm for his work and his career is as strong as ever. He talks with such an infectious enthusiasm about all of his roles that is easy to see why [Star Wars writer and producer] George Lucas picked him out for the lead role.

Drafting in Warwick to play Wicket was not to be Lucas’s only significant act on the young actor’s career. He would go on to achieve international stardom in the 1988 film Willow, co-written and produced by Lucas, in which Davis played the eponymous sorceror alongside Val Kilmer.

Warwick has since gone on to appear in a number of cult and commercially successful films, including several Harry Potter instalments, the Leprechaun series and the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

When the topic comes around to the type of roles he has played, Warwick is philosophical yet unswerving in his outlook, stating that he is more than happy being cast in sci-fi or fantasy genre films, usually playing what he calls “the slightly odder, alien kind of creatures or off the wall characters.

“I love doing all of that and would never deny doing any of that work at all because I’m a performer through and through and to have the chance to perform, albeit under make-up that takes four hours to apply, or a furry suit or what have you, that’s what I live for, the performance side of things,” he says emphatically.

“But I don’t think that any of that is any less important as far as acting goes than playing a role in Macbeth. I strive for perfection, and every job I do I try to do as best I can.”

So, with that in mind surely he would like to play more roles that didn’t necessarily require being short?

“Yeah I do, of course, that would be a lovely ambition and I suppose it’s one that does sit in the back of my mind,” he says.

“There are many roles that I see go through cinema and television and I think ‘oh I’d love to play that character’, but it wouldn’t work because I’m short and it doesn’t fit in with that particular film script.

“So yeah, I do strive for that and it’s lovely when I’m offered a role as I was in the movie Ray, where I was playing somebody who happened to be short, but I didn’t necessarily have to be short for the part.

“They’re quite nice roles to have. It’d be great to have it but I’m not waving the banner hoping that comes along. It’s just having the opportunity to perform and as long as it’s not something that’s exploitative or in any way demeaning, then I’m more than happy to be there.”

However, it’s Warwick’s next role that may yet prove to be his boldest to date, as he begins shooting a pilot for a BBC/HBO co-production which is to be written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the duo behind The Office and Extras.

Warwick explains that the idea came out of several filmmakers approaching him and his family about the prospect of doing a fly-on-the-wall documentary around his life, something he says never particularly appealed.

“But it did get me thinking, there’s obviously something I can do here, so maybe I should do my own documentary, where I can remain completely in control of it. But wouldn’t it be fun to slightly manipulate it so it doesn’t become a documentary any more, and make it funny? Wouldn’t it be good to point out to the world all the funny things that occur when you’re a little person in this big world?”

The result is a comedy spoof documentary called Life’s Too Short, which will initially be screened on BBC2, in which Warwick will play the lead role.

“It’s me as Warwick Davis, though I’m playing a kind of different version of myself, a rather fame hungry kind of person,” he explains.

“He loves recognition, he craves the fame element of being an actor, but he’s a bit down on his luck. He’s getting divorced but he does have the same career background as me, but the family side of things, the personal set-up, is fiction.”

Warwick freely admits that the show is likely to “strike a few nerves”, but insists that the aim is to turn the spotlight back onto the viewer, and that he is very much the one calling the shots.

“Being a little person, I own the joke,” he says.

“It’s more often than not making the world around me look like they’re the ones who are idiots if you like. Not only will it make people laugh, but it will also give people an insight into what the world as a little person can be like, and I think ultimately the world of disabled people and the way that you can be treated when you’re slightly different in society.”

As well as his work on screen, Warwick has worked hard behind the scenes to improve the situation for short actors, notably through his agency, Willow Management, which he established with his father-in-law Peter Burroughs, himself a successful short actor, in 1995 and which now represents over 100 clients.

“We started Willow Management mainly out of my father-in-law’s discontent at that time at how he was being represented as a short actor,” he explains.

“He’s 4 feet 6 and he’s been in the business many, many years and was dissatisfied with the pay and being treated like a second class actor and so he said if everybody stuck together, all the little actors in the country, we could hold out for more money and better treatment.

“We’ve turned the business around. When we talk about our clients and we talk to production companies and directors, we call them short actors. They’re not dwarves, they are short actors. They have their own prominence and their own talents and their own skills which we represent in them.”

Along with work still ongoing on the seventh and final Harry Potter film in which he plays two roles, Warwick is also finding time to squeeze an extensive book tour around the country, signing copies of his autobiography for fans.

“I’m firmly of the belief that you’re only as successful as your audience makes you,” he says, “and this is my way of saying ‘cheers, thanks a lot’.”

With everything on the horizon, is he pleased with where he finds himself?

“I can’t quite believe it to be honest,” he says.

“I never could have predicted this would happen.

“That’s what’s so wonderful about being an actor, you just never know. A wonderful opportunity presents itself to you and you’re doing something completely different.

“It’s very exciting.”

• Size Matters Not, published by Aurum Press, is available now.