Mike Quinn (puppeteer)

Mike Quinn (born in 1964) is an English actor, animator, and puppeteer. He is also known as Mike Quinby, Michael E. Quinn, and Michael Quinn.

Quinn, who hails from London, began puppeteering at age eight, with a magic act for his family.

In 1977, Quinn was a fan of the Muppets and got to meet Jim Henson where he'd regularly visited the set of The Muppet Show with his homemade puppets where learned and received various encouragement from Jim Henson and his co-workers.

Upon leaving school around 1980, he joined up with Jim Henson upon being hired by him when it came to working on The Great Muppet Caper where he filled in on crowd scenes and doubling up for the main Muppet characters. Mike Quinn later designed and built the Podlings for The Dark Crystal where he also performed the Skeksis Slave Master SkekNa (who was voiced by David Buck).

From 1987 to 2004, Mike Quinn was engaged to fellow puppeteer Karen Prell. When it came to Return of the Jedi, Mike Quinn assisted Frank Oz into performing Yoda alongside Kathryn Mullen. He also performed Nien Nunb in Return Of The Jedi as well. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mike Quinn joined forces with fellow puppeter David Barclay where they created Ultimate Animates, a production company created to experiment and develop new building and performing techniques for many of their own internal, as well as external, puppet productions. This led to Quinn directing and producing many productions.

When Jim Henson died, Mike Quinn was present at Jim Henson's memorial where he joined the other puppeteers in the "Just One Person" number operating one of the Penguins from The Muppet Show.

Mike Quinn later took up a talent for animating when he joined up with George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, first animating the famed dinosaurs in Jurassic Park III and then moved on to animate on Yoda and other creatures in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

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