Stage Actor Michael Pennington Dies at 82

Stage and screen actor Michael Pennington has died at the age of 82, his representatives confirmed.

Best known as Death Star Commander Moff Jerjerrod in Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Pennington was an accomplished Shakespearean actor and is listed as an Honorary Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

A friend described him as "an old friend, from Cambridge University days," adding: "I am sad beyond measure. Bless your dear memory, old chum."

Born Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington on June 7, 1943, in Cambridge, England, the actor's on-screen career began in 1965 with a supporting part in the BBC mini-series The War of the Roses.

He accumulated more than 70 screen roles over his career, including a part opposite Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, for which she won her third Academy Award for best actress.

The English actor collaborated often with Dame Judi Dench and her husband, Michael Williams. They starred together in several stage productions, including King Lear.

In a 2015 interview with the Independent, Pennington said watching Dench play Ophelia in a 1957 Hamlet production in London inspired him to enter the theater.

"There's no one quite like Judi. For her acting is playing: she's a lass unparalleled," he told the paper.

Pennington also appeared in several BBC productions, including The Witches of Pendle, Oedipus the King and an adaptation of Middlemarch.