10 Famous Movie Characters You Didn't Know Were Based On Real People
3. Jabba The Hutt Was Based On Sydney Greenstreet, An Obese Actor From The 50s
At first glance, the inspiration for Tatooine's corrupt crime boss would seem to be a giant pile of poo wearing a toad mask on Halloween. But it turns out everyone's favorite morbidly obese gangster was actually inspired by British actor Sydney Greenstreet, who made his living playing various miscreants in such masterpieces as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
Greenstreet was a big guy. In fact, he was so big that his credited character name in The Maltese Falcon was "The Fat Man". He also had an incredible knack for embodying seedy criminals who dabbled in slavery and smuggling. Sound familiar?
George Lucas' initial concept for Jabba - which was supposed to debut in A New Hope, a movie with a substantially smaller budget than Return of the Jedi - was basically a fat Irishman wearing half of a Chewbacca suit.
When that thankfully fell to the wayside, Lucas opted to go the space slug route. From there, he simply told his production crew to make Jabba look "alien and grotesque". Hell, really, make him look "just like Sydney Greenstreet".
And they just so happened to hit the nail right on the !*$% head, immortalizing the actor in a way he probably hadn't considered back when he was just making some dumb romantic drama with Humphrey Bogart.