André the Giant The Princess Bride (1987)

André René Roussimoff was born in 1946 in Coulommiers, France, the son of Bulgarian immigrants. By his early teens his pituitary tumor (acromegaly) had begun the unstoppable growth that would make him, at his peak, around seven feet four inches and over four hundred pounds. He was driven to school as a boy by his neighbor, the playwright Samuel Beckett, because he no longer fit on the school bus. He began wrestling at eighteen, became a star in France, then in Japan, and by the mid-1970s was a fixture of the World Wide Wrestling Federation in the United States — first as Andre the Giant, then as the most famous wrestler in the world.

William Goldman had Roussimoff in mind as Fezzik when he wrote the novel in 1973, a decade before Roussimoff's wrestling fame had crossed fully into mainstream culture. The casting for the film was specific — there was no list. (wikipedia)

"When I created Fezzik, I had Andre the Giant in mind. I had never met him, but I had seen pictures of him. So when they cast Andre, I was thrilled." — William Goldman, Vanity Fair (2012)

A body in pain

Roussimoff's health was already deteriorating during the shoot. His acromegaly produced chronic spinal pain that made standing, sitting, and especially lifting other people increasingly difficult. The wrestling scene with Westley in the boulder field had to be re-rigged so Cary Elwes could be supported by wires and crew rather than by Roussimoff's actual grip; the climbing-the-rope scene at the Cliffs of Insanity — in which Fezzik carries the others up the rope — was filmed with Roussimoff supported by a separate cable.^b8 He had undergone back surgery shortly before the shoot. (vanity fair)

"He was in such terrible pain. He had just had back surgery, and he was in agony every day. But he never complained. He was the gentlest man I ever met." — Cary Elwes, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride (2014) (book, not available online)

The voice was the surprise

The body was familiar from wrestling broadcasts. The voice — high, soft, French-accented, surprisingly tender — was the discovery the film made. Reiner cast Roussimoff knowing the body would carry the role visually, then built the part around what the voice could do: the rhyming couplets with Inigo, the line anybody want a peanut, the gentle "I do not envy you the headache you will have when you awake" delivered to the Albino.^b31

Mandy Patinkin has reported that the rhyming exchanges with Roussimoff were partially improvised by the two of them on set, with Patinkin matching Roussimoff's pace and intonation rather than the other way around.

After Princess Bride

Roussimoff continued wrestling. His most famous late-career match — against Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania III in March 1987 — had taken place six months before The Princess Bride opened, drawing one of the largest indoor wrestling crowds in American history. He retired from in-ring work in 1991 and died of congestive heart failure in January 1993, at age forty-six, in a Paris hotel room while attending his father's funeral.

A 2018 HBO documentary, Andre the Giant, produced by Bill Simmons and the Duplass Brothers, treated his life in full and gave significant attention to the Princess Bride shoot. Roussimoff has been reported, by every co-star and crew member who has spoken about him, as one of the most universally beloved presences any of them encountered on a set.

"He was the kind of person that everyone gravitated toward. He was a gentle giant in every sense. The whole crew loved him. Nobody worked harder." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)