With just under three months to go before the seventh instalment of Star Wars, C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels has complained about the “ludicrous” security measures surrounding the plot and content of The Force Awakens.

The 69 year old, who is reprising his role as the hesitant, slightly panicky gold robot in the much-hyped movie, out at the end of December 2015, was speaking to The Guardian about his feelings on the new film, the prequels and his character.

“The secrecy has been beyond ludicrous,” he revealed. “For heaven's sake, it's a movie. When I got the script, it was typed in black on paper of the deepest red so you couldn't photocopy it. I got a hangover just reading it!”

Anthony DanielsAnthony Daniels, the actor behind C-3PO

To illustrate this, he recalled an occasion when he received an official warning from Disney’s studio bosses when he revealed a cast member’s name via social media by accident. “I said that I'd met so-and-so. An actor who plays a... thing in the film. A character. Immediately I received a message from Disney: 'Remove the tweet! You're not allowed to say that!' Honestly. It's a kind of Kremlin attitude.”

More: Anthony Daniels assures fans that C-3PO will not be CGI in ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

When pressed for any possible details he was allowed to reveal, he replied: “Look, I know perfectly well not to tell you now what I'm giving you for a Christmas present because it would spoil the surprise. And these films are all about opening the box on Christmas Day, [but] there was none of this paranoia [with the first movie] because it was a daft little film and no one cared.”

When The Force Awakens was first announced, Daniels reassured fans of the franchise that his character was not going to be rendered through CGI and would actually be a physical presence on the set. In the new interview, he also criticised the second trilogy of movies in the franchise’s history as being too reliant on special effects and losing some of its impact.

Star Wars logo

“The effects are clever but pointless,” he said in reference to Episodes I, II and III. “The skill is there, but so what? Coldness, that’s the word. Bleakness, even.”

He was pleased that Jj Abrams, who has directed the forthcoming movie, insisted on proper sets. “It became clear early on that with JJ we were getting back to the old-fashioned kind of film-making. We have walls. Actual sets! All right, so you might not have a view out of the window, but you have a window.”

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