10 Actors DE-AGED For Huge Movie Roles
2. Ian MacDiarmid - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Darth Vader may be the poster boy for the Saga, but what is Star Wars without it's most dastardly of villains, the Emperor (or Palpatine, as he's known to his friends)?
Providing the impetus for pretty much every bad thing that happens across the nine Skywalker Saga films, Palpatine is the sinister puppet master, skulking in the shadows and controlling the action from a distance. And given his hideous and deformed face, it's probably a wise choice on his part.
Despite having last played the character 16 years previously in Return of the Jedi, Ian MacDiarmid returned to play Sheev Palpatine in the first entry of the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace, as a relatively fresh-faced senator of the Republic. And he did it with no makeup, no digital effects, no nothing.
In a moment of serendipity, the actor's real age aligned with the younger character's at the right time, making him age backwards on screen, and providing one of the most seamless prequel movie character continuities ever witnessed. And it must have been some relief to get out of the heavy prosthetics that George Lucas buried him under in Jedi - despite this only lasting for a film or two.