Warwick Davis: ‘Diana said to me, at the end of the movie, You give us princesses a rough ride’

In a hotel suite overlooking a darkening Leicester Square, actor Warwick Davis picks up a pair of opera glasses and points them in the direction of the Empire Cinema. In 1988, he was there attending the London premiere of Willow, a swashbuckling comedy-adventure movie directed by Ron Howard with a story by George Lucas, who executive produced. It stars Davis and Val Kilmer as sorcerer and scoundrel, the bickering protectors of a baby princess with magic powers.

Davis remembers being seated next to another princess, Diana, sandwiched between her and Prince Charles.

“I was holding the popcorn,” Davis jokes, adding: “Diana said to me, at the end of the movie, ‘You give us princesses a rough ride.’”

Willow remains a standout role for 52-year-old Davis, who is a stalwart of sci-fi, horror and fantasy franchises including Star Wars, the Leprechaun films and Harry Potter. He has been immortalised in plastic many, many times.

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“I hold the record for the most mini figures of characters I’ve played,” he says with mock seriousness, dressed in a tailored blue velvet blazer.

Willow was not a hit despite its illustrious pedigree. It received middling reviews and was perceived as a rare misfire by Lucas, architect of the Star Wars and (with Steven Spielberg) Indiana Jones franchises. But it left a mark on a then-eight-year-old Jonathan Kasdan, creator of an eight-episode TV sequel that premiered last week on Disney+.

In a phone interview, Kasdan, whose father, Lawrence, co-wrote some of Lucas’ most celebrated films, including the original Star Wars trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark, describes Willow as “a giant, very tactile adventure with this small person at the centre of it”. He adds that Davis, as the kind, clearheaded Willow, a farmer who learns sorcery, is “an incredibly relatable movie star”.

The TV series, set roughly 20 years after the events of the movie, sees the return of an older, wiser and altogether more reluctant Willow, this time shepherding a found family of ragtag misfits (portrayed by Ruby Cruz, Erin Kellyman, Ellie Bamber, Tony Revolori and Amar Chadha-Patel) in search of a kidnapped prince.

For Davis, the TV show allowed him to return to what is arguably still his signature character, the one that proved that a young actor used to performing in creature costumes could be the face of a Hollywood epic.

“It was the role that gave me everything,” he says.

When you’re shorter than average at school, the conversation is happening 2ft above you

Davis grew up just south of London in the 1970s, in Epsom, Surrey, a commuter town he describes as having been “very quaint” until a McDonald’s arrived on the high street. Davis, who has spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita and is 3ft, 6in tall, had various medical issues as a child but says his parents, who were of average size, “let me do everything I wanted”. As an adolescent, this included riding “a mini motorbike” and throwing himself around in various ways.

“I should never have done any of those things because I have an instability in my neck due to my skeletal dysplasia,” he says. “I could have paralysed myself.”

The big, fun-loving personality Davis developed, he says, is partly a result of his size.

“When you’re shorter than average at school, the conversation is happening 2ft above you,” he says.

“You become louder and funnier so you get noticed,” he says. “I became this larger-than-life character just so I wouldn’t get left out.”

That joyful persona is genuine, says Joanne Whalley, who also starred in the Willow film and reprises her role in the series.

“He’s a lover of life,” she says in a phone interview.

Davis began acting at 11, donning a furry suit and mask to play an Ewok, Wicket W Warrick, in the Star Wars sequel Return of the Jedi. (His grandmother had encouraged him to audition after hearing a radio ad looking for short performers.) He went on to reprise the character in several made-for-TV spin-offs, and during filming for Star Wars: Ewok Adventures, Davis says, Lucas told his mother about an idea he had for the actor once he was older.

Filmed when he was 17, Willow offered Davis his first opportunity to “pop out” from behind a mask and be a “proper actor”, he says. It also changed his life in ways that went beyond his career.

Davis’ future wife, Samantha, was an extra on Willow, and Davis approached her at the premiere after-party at the Waldorf, in London’s West End.

“I didn’t actively chat her up, but she said I did,” he says. “She said, ‘You kind of wooed me that night.’” Davis begins to cry as he tells this story, then pauses and clears his throat. “I get emotional talking about that.”

I can do more than be a nice, happy sorcerer. Leprechaun was a chance to really go crazy

Despite the mixed reviews, Willow was profitable, earning more than $110 million worldwide, and it had a long afterlife in home video. But for Davis, it gave way to a five-year lull in which “there were no scripts, none at all”. During that period, he made a living as a videographer “filming people’s wedding ceremonies”, he says, a job he describes as “infinitely dull” and relentlessly soundtracked by the Chris de Burgh power ballad The Lady in Red.

Then in the early 1990s, the script for the horror-comedy Leprechaun landed on his desk. A twisted subversion of the mythical Irish creature, the film offered Davis a chance to prove that “I can do more than be a nice, happy sorcerer”, he says. “Leprechaun was a chance to really go crazy.”

It went on to become a cult hit, and Davis reprised the role in five more movies, even rapping and getting high with his co-star Ice-T in the fifth instalment, Leprechaun in the Hood (2000). His performance in the Leprechaun films is characterised by a knowing sense of humour, something that colleagues say infuses many of his performances.

“There’s a weary sarcasm at the heart of what Warwick can do,” Kasdan says.

In person, this quality emerges in the deadpan asides that Davis drops into the conversation. He is also a gifted storyteller, a skill Kasdan credited to Davis’ “memory for everything he’s experienced” and to an “amazing voice that makes it feel like you’re listening to John Houseman tell you about the first time he got drunk”.

(For the record, Davis’ first experience with alcohol was drinking margaritas during the original Willow shoot in New Zealand. “At 17, I was pure of heart and soul,” he says dryly, adding that his co-stars Kilmer and Whalley “did corrupt me a little bit”.)

Davis, who grew up watching Laurel and Hardy, loves physical comedy, particularly when it’s at his own expense. He built self-deprecating slapstick into Life’s Too Short, the showbiz satire series he created with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, which starred Davis as a fictional version of himself.

“If I fall over or drop something, I will laugh at that,” he says.

I thought it’s about time these guys got to do something important instead of just dressing up and playing elves

His sense of humour exists alongside a seriousness of purpose. In 1996, he set up Willow Management, an agency representing actors with dwarfism. He has continued his advocacy as he has racked up credits in some of Hollywood’s biggest franchises – he appeared in all of the Harry Potter films and most of the Star Wars ones since Jedi – founding a charity, Little People UK, in 2012 with his wife and creating the Reduced Height Theatre Company.

“I thought it’s about time these guys got to do something important instead of just dressing up and playing elves,” he says.

When Kasdan approached him about reviving Willow, Davis was keen to “have another go”, he says. Now a father of two, he said he was armed with a parent’s understanding of what it means to be responsible for another human’s life – and “to make sure the path it takes is a good one, the right one as well”.

Davis brought another thing to the sequel that he didn’t have the first time around: a veteran movie star’s confidence.

Kasdan says, “I had this very clear image in my head of him, with this greying long hair, and how powerful that could be.” He was convinced that it would be the best that Davis had ever looked on-screen.

Davis says that when he finally donned Willow’s wig, he could only agree. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times