Star Wars' Admiral Ackbar actor reduced to tears at iconic character's "disappointing" Last Jedi role

If you were underwhelmed by everyone's favourite Mon Calamari Admiral Ackbar's off-screen death in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, you're not alone.

In fact, the puppeteer – who has played the cult Star Wars character since his first appearance in Return of the Jedi – has revealed he was "in tears" after being "disappointed" by how he was killed off.

If you remember, the military commander was among the characters who were taken out by the First Order's attack on the Resistance, which also saw General Leia thrown out into space and miraculously survive.

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His death was then confirmed by another character later on, and puppeteer Tim Rose has now admitted to YouTuber Jamie Stangroom that he was expecting a more dramatic demise.

"After waiting 30 years to reprise Ackbar I was a little disappointed with Ackbar's role in that picture," he said. "So in The Last Jedi, I was quite looking forward to maybe them giving him something more juicy.

"We were only given the script on the day when we were shooting that piece of script, so each day I would come to work going, 'Is today the day when Ackbar gets something a bit more involving?'

"And I looked at my script and I went, 'Oh, Ackbar's going out of the window. Well, that's that then!'"

The puppeteer then revealed that he was called to the camera after finishing his scenes, thinking that they were "going to say thank you for being one of the heritage characters and giving 30 years and all that".

"But what they did was, they gave me a Millennium Falcon sign that had the day and the date on it, the scene number, and they said, 'Can you look at the camera and say, It's a wrap? Because that would be really funny,'" he added.

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Rose went on: "I was actually in tears in the suit because I thought – after everything, after hoping there'd be something, after knowing there wasn't going to be anything else, Ackbar's final moment before he went in to the box was a big joke about 'It's a wrap'.

"They just thought, 'Wouldn't it be funny?' And that was the sum total of my life as Ackbar. I disappeared down the back and couldn't come out for 30 minutes after that."

Oh dear.

The next movie in the saga, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will be released on Thursday, December 19 in the UK and Friday, December 20 in the US.

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Sam Warner

Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International.  Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' as a sub-editor.