Standing at 7 feet 3, Mayhew was originally cast as the fierce, furry sidekick and co-pilot to Harrison Ford’s Han Solo owing entirely to his imposing physicality. Desperate to find someone in England who would be taller than Darth Vader, played by 6-foot-6 bodybuilder David Prowse, George Lucas found Mayhew, who had been working as a hospital orderly when he was discovered a year earlier and cast in the role of the Minotaur in Ray Harryhausen’s fantasy film “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.”