LOS ANGELES • American electrical engineer Grant Imahara, who co-hosted the pop science show MythBusters (2003 to 2018) on the Discovery Channel and operated robots in the Star Wars prequels (1999 to 2005) and other major Hollywood films, died on Monday. He was 49.
A company spokesman for Discovery said the cause was believed to be a brain aneurysm.
"We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant," Discovery said in a statement. "He was an important part of our Discovery family and a wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family."
Imahara was born in Los Angeles and graduated in 1993 with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California.
He later worked as an animatronics engineer and model-maker for Industrial Light & Magic, a designer of movie special effects that was founded by director George Lucas in 1975.
Imahara operated the R2-D2 droid in the Star Wars prequels. He also worked on Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003), director Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and the Matrix sequels (2003), among other films, and developed a custom circuit for the Energizer Bunny's arms and ears.
Imahara worked on MythBusters from 2005 to 2014, initially as a member of its "build team". Asked in a 2008 interview with the website MachineDesign what a typical day on the show looked like, Imahara replied that there was no such thing.
"We could be jumping out of planes, learning to swing on a trapeze, swimming with sharks and the list goes on and on," he said. "We usually find out what we're doing for the week on Monday morning."
Along with his former MythBusters co-hosts Kari Byron and Tory Belleci, Imahara later co-hosted White Rabbit Project, a show on Netflix that looked back on history's greatest inventions and heists. It ran for one season in 2016.
In March, he shared on his Facebook page how he made his own animatronic Baby Yoda, the popular character from the Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019).
NYTIMES
