Age: 77
male
Benjamin "Ben" Burtt, Jr. is a sound designer, film editor, director, screenwriter, and voice actor. He has worked as sound designer on various films, including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, WALL-E, and Star Trek. He is responsible for creating many of the iconic sound effects heard in the Star Wars film franchise, including the binary speech of R2-D2, the lightsaber hum, the sound of the blaster guns, and the heavy-breathing sound of Darth Vader, which he made by breathing into a scuba regulator. Burtt has a reputation for popularizing a sound effect dubbed the "Wilhelm scream", which was taken from a character named Wilhelm in the 1953 film The Charge at Feather River.
The Star Wars film series, which developed into a trilogy of trilogies and which has been rebranded as the "Skywalker saga", was released beginning with the original trilogy (Episodes IV, V and VI, 1977–1983), followed by the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II and III, 1999–2005) and the sequel trilogy (Episodes VII, VIII and IX, 2015–2019). The three trilogies each focus on the Force-sensitive Skywalker family. The prequels focus on Anakin Skywalker and his training as a Jedi and eventual fall to the dark side as Darth Vader. The original trilogy follows his children, Luke and Leia, as they join the Rebel Alliance and battle Vader and the Galactic Empire. The sequel trilogy features Kylo Ren (Ben Solo), a major antagonist and eventual Supreme Leader of the First Order, and son of Leia, nephew of Luke, and grandson of Anakin.
