71 Facts About Toby Philpott

Toby Philpott was born on 14 February 1946 and is an English puppeteer best known for his work in motion picture animatronics during the 1980s in such films as The Dark Crystal and Return of the Jedi.

Toby Philpott began his film career after Jim Henson personally selected Philpott to work on the 1982 fantasy film The Dark Crystal, in which he worked side-by-side with Henson.

The next year, Toby Philpott was approached to serve as one of the puppeteers controlling Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.

Toby Philpott controlled the left arm, head, tongue and body of the giant Hutt puppet.

Toby Philpott would lend his puppetry skills to other such movies as The Company of Wolves, Labyrinth, Little Shop of Horrors and Who Framed Roger Rabbit before leaving the film industry.

Toby Philpott was born 14 February 1946 in London, England into a family of performers and teachers.

Toby Philpott, known as "Pantopuck the Puppet Man," was a well-known puppeteer who would go on to become a writer and teacher on the subject of puppets.

Toby Philpott's mother, Sheila Moriarty, was a singer and actress who taught voice lessons and Shakespearian verse speaking.

At an early age, Toby Philpott discovered an interest in the performing arts and a particular love for magic.

Toby Philpott developed an interest in puppetry in part by reading a diary his father kept about using puppets throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Toby Philpott had a rebellious attitude when it came to such matters as money and capitalism.

Toby Philpott dropped out of school and began to travel the world, living what he would later describe as a "Bohemian" and "gypsy" lifestyle.

Toby Philpott spent two years visiting various locations in the United States of America and Mexico with Gareau.

Toby Philpott returned to London in 1972 and gate-crashed a Le Grand Magic Circus show on New Year's Eve at the famed Roundhouse arts venue.

Toby Philpott was invited onto the stage during the show, and his childhood interest for the performing arts was reignited.

Toby Philpott tried to join Le Grand Magic Circus in Paris and participated in one show, but was not picked up for continued employment.

Toby Philpott returned to the United Kingdom determined to perform for a living and, while juggling outside London's Oval House Theatre, was discovered by John and Crissie Trigger, who ran a traveling entertainment company called The Raree Show.

Toby Philpott spent the next several years traveling and performing in both Raree and solo gigs, in such places as Liverpool, Sweden, Germany, Mexico and the United States.

Toby Philpott's acts included juggling, magic, fire eating, acrobatics, unicycling, fireworks, clowning, and slapstick comedy in such venues as schools, theatres, Medieval festivals, street markets and children's television.

Toby Philpott ran theatre workshops for children and learned how to play various musical instruments and apply stage make-up.

Toby Philpott spent the mid-1970s living in the London shed of Australian Chris Lofven and Lyne Helms, who at the time were working on the 1976 film Oz: A Rock 'n' Roll Road Movie.

Toby Philpott continued traveling all over Europe as a street performer, where he used hand-made props and performed self-invented tricks.

Toby Philpott performed in opening acts at such venues as the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden.

Toby Philpott performed in various fringe theatre groups, including the Red Buddha Theatre with Japanese musician Stomu Yamashta, and Incubus with Richard LeParmentier, who would go on to play Admiral Motti in A New Hope.

Toby Philpott learned stage management and other "techie stuff" at the Melkweg music venue and cultural center in Amsterdam.

Toby Philpott was dropped from the film when the project changed producers, but the experience opened Philpott to the possibility of entering into a new entertainment medium.

Toby Philpott saw the film as a chance to apply his performing arts skills into a "new and exciting field" and, since the audition involved a workshop, he felt he could learn something from the experience even if he did not get a job.

Toby Philpott answered the call and was selected from about 200 letter applications.

Toby Philpott participated in the initial audition workshop, which provided instruction on basic puppetry skills and improvisation techniques, and was among the 50 who were called back for additional workshops, where the pool of finalists was narrowed down to 20.

Toby Philpott described the final round of workshops as extremely competitive, but he was among the final 10 chosen to work on the film.

Henson, who Toby Philpott described as "the nicest millionaire I ever met," had a hands-on role in the selection process.

Toby Philpott was supposed to be among four that would start work immediately, but after suffering back problems due to the amount of running in the workshops, Toby Philpott had to remain with the second team of six who worked on the film during the spring of 1982.

Toby Philpott began training in bodywork and puppeteering, and worked with the early incarnations of the character puppets, which began to become fine-tuned around the specific puppeteers.

Toby Philpott often played the right arm of the characters Henson animated.

Toby Philpott said whenever he made a mistake due to lack of expressiveness or timing in his gestures, Henson remained very patient and never raised his voice or became angry.

The main character Toby Philpott played in The Dark Crystal was urTih the Alchemist, one of the urRu; Toby Philpott later described him as the favorite character he ever puppeteered.

Toby Philpott said the puppet designs alone gave the creatures a great deal of characters, which helped him prepare for the roles.

Nevertheless, Toby Philpott said the puppeteers and filmmakers were a "very happy and engaged crew" and because the techniques and methods were so new during The Dark Crystal, he enjoyed a level of hands-on involvement that would not be matched in his future movies.

David Barclay, who had been a puppet builder for The Dark Crystal, was chosen as one of the operators of the massive Jabba the Hutt puppet, and asked for Toby Philpott to be hired as his partner.

Toby Philpott, who was unaware of Barclay's politicking on his behalf, was surprised by the sudden job offer, and eagerly accepted it.

Barclay was the chief Jabba puppeteer who planned all the movements and guided all the other performers; Toby Philpott controlled Jabba's left arm, with which he controlled many of Jabba's more active motions, including eating frogs, smoking the Hookah pipe and assaulting Bib Fortuna and C-3PO.

Toby Philpott used his right hand to control Jabba's tongue and animate his head, and controlled the body by swiveling his seat with his leg braces.

Toby Philpott resisted at first since the tongue, which was covered in K-Y Jelly, was difficult to control, but Marquand convinced him to do it.

The brief scene in which Jabba eats the frogs took several takes to get correctly since it was difficult for Toby Philpott to reach Jabba's mouth with the left arm; the filmmakers originally tried to use an actual frog but it kept escaping and hopping around the set.

Toby Philpott served as president of the International Jugglers' Association from 1982 to 1983, and did animatronic work for the 1984 film, The Company of Wolves.

Toby Philpott operated several characters, including a goblin puppet that sat at the foot of the throne of Jareth the Goblin King, who was played by David Bowie.

Toby Philpott controlled the eyes of the Junk Lady character and was one of the many sets of hands among the Helping Hands, hand-shaped goblins that protruded from the walls of Jareth's castle and acted with the other hands to create talking face-formations.

Toby Philpott said his fondest memory during the production of Labyrinth was taking his six-year-old son, Keili, on a tour of the set of the Goblin Village.

Toby Philpott did not enjoy his time working on Labyrinth due to a back injury he suffered while playing soccer in Somerset prior to getting the job.

The therapy proved so effective, Toby Philpott was able to walk up a mountain in Spain to organize a juggling convention after filming on Labyrinth wrapped.

Toby Philpott was called to work on the 1986 Frank Oz film Little Shop of Horrors, where he was among a team of people who operated the animatronic plant that, in the film, feeds on human blood.

The plant increased in size throughout the movie and, at its largest incarnation, Toby Philpott controlled one of the tentacles.

The filmmakers created a new, more upbeat ending, and Toby Philpott was out of town and unavailable for the plant's new scenes.

Toby Philpott auditioned before Brian Henson, the son of Jim Henson, for a part in Return to Oz, the 1985 semi-sequel to the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz.

Toby Philpott was on the short list for the film but, for reasons unknown to him and to his great disappointment, was not offered the job.

Toby Philpott felt the death of Jim Henson in 1990 resulted in a younger staff at the Jim Henson Company, which severed the ties of Philpott and other long-standing puppeteers.

Toby Philpott, who went into what he called "a bit of a downward spiral" during this point of his life, was working in a circus school and holding juggling workshops when he met a group of people who eventually started their own traveling circus company in 1986, called the Nofit State Circus.

Toby Philpott left the school to go on the road with NoFit, at first working as part of the big top tent crew, and he found that erecting and disassembling the tent drew crowds by itself.

Toby Philpott eventually became a stage manager and performed with the circus, traveling with them for several summer tours throughout the United Kingdom until the mid-1990s.

Toby Philpott made a brief return to the movies to participate in the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a comedy that combined live-action film with animation.

David Barclay was tasked with putting together a team of puppeteers to work on the movie and he contacted Toby Philpott, who was living atop of a mountain in Spain at the time.

Toby Philpott sensed that his animatronic art form was dying and knew he would probably never work in movies again.

Toby Philpott did appear as a juggler in the background of the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy, which starred Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson, and Rowan Atkinson.

Toby Philpott played Norman Nesbitt, a geeky man who believes he has been contacted by UFOs.

Toby Philpott was placed in a room full of maps, cardboard spaceships and notebooks filled with his own scribblings.

Toby Philpott was not paid for the one-day performance, which was completely improvised.

In December 1997, after more than 30 years of self-employment, Toby Philpott took a job at Cardiff Central Library as a library technician, where he provides information technology and other computer support; Philpott described the job as a logical move at that stage in his life and said he realized would be necessary to stay employed in the next century.

Toby Philpott remains well known for his animatronics work, particularly on Return of the Jedi, and attends occasional science fiction conventions to meet fans and sign autographs, including Celebration Europe in 2007.

Toby Philpott said he had no idea how large the Star Wars fanbase was until he started using the Internet in 1999.

In November 2007, Toby Philpott wrote a 50,000-word novel in one month, as part of the National Novel Writing Month creative writing project.

Toby Philpott did not dismiss CGI altogether, especially when it appears seamless and convincing as he believed it did in Steven Spielberg's 1994 film, Jurassic Park.