Peter Mayhew
British-American actor
Peter William Mayhew (19 May 1944 – 30 April 2019) was a British-American actor. He was best known for portraying Chewbacca in the Star Wars film series. He played the character in all of his live-action appearances from the 1977 original to 2015's The Force Awakens before his retirement from the role. He also voiced the character in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and portrayed him in some television shows, including The Muppet Show.
Early life
Peter Mayhew was born on 19 May 1944, in Barnes, Surrey. At the age of 8, he was diagnosed with gigantism. Mayhew is often erroneously reported as having a genetic tissue disorder called Marfan syndrome; however, his family has clarified that Mayhew suffered from pituitary gigantism. His peak height was 7 feet 3 inches (2.21 m).
Career
Early work
Mayhew gained his first acting job when the producers of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) discovered him from a photograph in a newspaper article about men with large feet, and cast him in the role of the Minoton.
Star Wars
1977–1983: Star Wars original trilogy
Mayhew played Chewbacca in five Star Wars films of the Skywalker saga: the original trilogy (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi), Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
“Peter Mayhew” enters the record as british-American actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Peter, Mayhew and British-American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q560552. VIAF identifies the subject as 315534422. The Library of Congress control number is no97051934. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2019, 1977 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Mayhew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.