James Earl Jone's booming tones helped make Darth Vader the most feared villain in screen history. He's also a hard act to follow. So when George Lucas needed a voice for his new baddie Darth Maul, he naturally turned to.... an unknown 26 year-old scouser called Peter Serafinowicz.

"I don't know how I got the job. I think it must have been the Force," jokes voice-over artist and actor Serafinowizc.

In fact, Lucasfilm contacted him two years ago and he auditioned for the role.

"I had to come up with a scary voice which could be attributed to a younger villain," he says. "Basically I used my own voice with a kind of Marlboro huskiness thrown in."

Convinced he'd lost the role, he was overjoyed to receive a phone call out of the blue last December telling him the good news.

A few days later, the "massive" Star Wars fan was in a London studio working with his hero George Lucas.

"I was trying to be dead cool when actually I was shivering," he says. "But I did my Darth Vader impression for him and he laughed, so that helped calm me down."

He watched new footage and lip-synched Darth Maul's dialogue over Ray Park's voice which Lucas deemed not deep enough.

"I don't really say much in the film. Mostly I watched lightsaber battle scenes and did grunts and growls while George Lucas watched from the couch, " he recalls. "I got a bit carried away and pretended I had a lightsaber -- I was waving my arms about."

Serafinowicz spent three afternoons under Lucas'watchful gaze but the only instruction he received from the director was to ensure the voice "dripped with evil".

He didn't really direct me all that much," recalls Serafinowicz. "He just kind of expects everyone to know what to do."

And so the actor best known for minor roles in BBC2 sitcom How Do You Want Me and the Harry Enfield And Friends series is now set to become one of cinema's most mimicked voices.

I heard a comedian do him on American TV," he says. "He sounded like a cross between Darh Maul and Dick Van Dyke. It was really funny."