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Star Wars has had plenty of great voice actors in its long history, but few voices have become as iconic as C-3PO. You’d think that for a character like 3PO, who has more lines in the original movie than anyone else, George Lucas would have known exactly how the droid would sound before he started filming, but the voice didn’t come together until the very first day of shooting after Anthony Daniels pulled influences from places like Doctor Who and Barbarella.

At Star Wars Celebration 2025, Anthony Daniels explained that, because he was only hired to wear the suit and to be on screen, he didn’t know what sort of voice he would use for C-3PO until they were about to start filming. Part of the reason was because he didn’t have very many previous pop culture examples. “This was 1975 when I first met George Lucas and, you know, we talked about the droid. We vaguely talked about the voice, but then, of course… he didn’t need to use my voice at all. But I, the only thing I could remember was, of course, the Daleks, who were, of course, very kindly.”

We’ll pause to mention that Anthony Daniels then did a fantastic impression of the Daleks at this point that we didn’t expect but desperately loved.

“There was a robot in Barbarella,” he continued. “Anybody remember Barbarella? It was the spaceship’s voice, I think, that was quite sort of twee for want of a better word, but none of that worked and I practiced at home and it was all rubbish.”

So Anthony Daniels went into the first day of shooting without having decided what C-3PO’s voice would be. It wasn’t until he was in the desert filming the scene in A New Hope where Luke and Owen first buy the droids from the Sandcrawler that lightning struck. “I was wearing this horrific suit for the first time. It didn’t work. It didn’t fit, whatever, and then George said, ‘Action.’ And I think out all the strangeness of being in this other place, this planet, the sand, the sun, the suit, the camera. I think 3PO suddenly became quite nervous and has remained so ever since.”

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