mechanical and electrical effects for a film that he had written, Star Wars. Stears accepted the offer. Stears had something in common with Alec Guinness and John Williams; he had won an Academy Award before working on Star Wars. For Star Wars (1977), Stears created the robots R2-D2 and C-3PO, Luke Skywalker's Landspeeder, the Jedi Knights' lightsabers, and the Death Star. Stears was also credited, along with John Dykstra, for the original film's climactic aerial dogfight. Other well known mechanical effects Stears orchestrated included the garbage compacter, making an X-wing fighter fly and the Jawa's sandcrawler. In 1978, producer Harry Saltzman hired Stears to direct the "shrunken man" epic film The Micronauts. The troubled project had been in pre-production for many years and saw many directors come and go; ultimately the film never made it into production. Awards John Stears is notably one of only a few people to ever win an Academy Award for a James Bond film and one of only eight to win an Academy Award for a Star Wars film. 1965 - Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Thunderball 1977 - Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 1978 - Saturn Award for Best Special Effects for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 1982 - Saturn Award for Best Special Effects (nomination) for Outland Selected filmography Call Me Bwana (1963) From Russia with Love (1963) Goldfinger (1964) Court Martial (TV series) (1965) Thunderball (1965) You Only Live Twice (1967) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) Toomorrow (1970) The Pied Piper (1972) Sitting Target (1972) Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973) O Lucky Man! (1973) The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) That Lucky Touch (1975) Sky Riders (1976) Star Wars (1977) The Martian Chronicles (1980) Hopscotch (1980) The Awakening (1980) Outland (1981) Turkey Shoot (1983) Sahara (1983) The Bounty (1984) F/X: Murder by Illusion (1986) Haunted Honeymoon (1986) Miracles (1986) Navy SEALs (1990) Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993) Babylon 5 (1994) The Mask of Zorro (1998) Death Stears died on 28 April 1999 in UCLA Medical Center after a stroke. His wife, Brenda, and other family members had wanted the death kept quiet until after services in Pacific Palisades in May and in London. The family announced his death in June of that same year. Stears owned homes in Pacific Palisades and