The second and final batch of items from the personal collection of Anthony Daniels goes under the hammer at next week’s Propstore Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction in LA, including a a screen-matched light-up C-3PO head form Return of the Jedi. The actor spoke to The Hollywood Reporter from his home in England about why now was the right time to say goodbye to the memorabilia he’s collected over the last 50 years.
One of the centerpieces of the Anthony Daniels Collection is a screen-matched light-up head that Daniels wore in 1983’s Return of the Jedi. The object, consisting of a faceplate, backplate and neck-ring, could fetch anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million. (At a similar auction involving Daniels last November, another C-3PO head gaveled for almost $850,000.)
C-3PO is central to Daniels’ identity as an actor, and that head is in some ways the mask he presents to the world. “It is not only the prop that I wore, but it was also a prop I would use in interviews to identify myself,” Daniels tells The Hollywood Reporter from his home in England. “It’s very much, ‘You don’t know my face, but you know this face.’”
And a few weeks ago, he was doing a final photo shoot with the head and “had a slight wobble,” as he puts it. “Am I right to move this on?” he asked himself. “I have lived with these items for 50 years, some of them,” he notes, “and I have very mixed feelings.”
It was a fleeting feeling, his resolve rebuilding itself as quickly as some new Death Star. “I had all this stuff, almost all of it was in cupboards, drawers and in attics. Nobody was looking at it, nobody was treasuring it, if you will. And it was too good to throw away,” says the actor.
In 2023, items belonging to late Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew were to have been sold off until his widow learned of the auction and asked for the items to be donated to Mayhew’s foundation.
Daniels originally was going to leave his collection to his wife, Christine Savage, to sell after he died. When he told her his plan, her response was, “Why don’t you sell it now?”
“She doesn’t want to deal with this stuff,” says the actor, who turned 78 in February.
Amid the everything-must-go mentality, Daniels did keep two things. One was a statue from Lucasfilm congratulating him for 40 years of service. The other, an 18-inch C-3PO statue made out of Legos.
But it feels like everything else droid- and Daniels-related is in the auction, from a hand-annotated early draft script from the original Star Wars movie and pages of hand-written Ewok dialogue to a C-3PO Igloo cooler and a pair of unworn R2-D2 Adidas jogging shoes.
It is evening in London, and the actor picks up the auction catalog for his objets d’art. He falls into a reflective mood as he thumbs through the pages, memories bubbling up like an X-wing rising from a swamp.
Among the items are two lots of sockets and tubes from the famed starship the Millennium Falcon, parts that Daniels rescued when he came across a bonfire transpiring in the U.K.’s Elstree Studios after completing shooting Return of the Jedi. There was less thought given to props in that era of moviemaking, and storage space always remained an issue. Besides, no one thought Star Wars would continue after the original trilogy.
“They were burning the Millennium Falcon,” he said, his voice rising in astonishment. “I was horrified. I think everyone is fond of the Falcon. It had a character about it. The wooden and the plastic and parts, they were making a disgusting bonfire in the drizzle. I just picked up some pieces.”
Read the interview in full here, and listen to Daniels talking about his collection in an exclusive interview on RADIO 1138 where we spoke about turning up in the Disney+ Ahsoka series, fandom and much more.
Head to Propstore to register, order the catalog, and see the auction’s featured items for the auction taking place between March 12th and 14th.
