Jason Wingreen, the character actor who provided the voice of Boba Fett in Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back, has died. He was 95.
Although it eventually became his most iconic role, Wingreen (who originally auditioned for the role of Yoda) has said the time required to supply the four lines of dialogue given to the bounty hunter “could have been no more than 10 minutes.” He wasn’t credited for the part—a fact he occasionally lamented, especially given the use of his voice in subsequent Boba Fett action figures—and it didn’t become publicly known that he was the voice of Fett until 2000.
Born in Brooklyn, the actor made a career appearing in numerous television and film projects, with his most enduring TV role being that of Harry Snowden, the Kelsey’s bartender on both All In The Family and Archie Bunker’s Place, from 1976 until 1983. That was the part, Wingreen said, that “allowed me to retire.” But he played a diverse and far-ranging array of roles through the decades, on series from Star Trek to Matlock to The Twilight Zone. His final acting credits, according to the nearly 200 roles listed by IMDB, were for guest spots on Seinfeld and In The Heat Of The Night in the early ’90s.