Darth Vader appearances
Even the most mainstream appearance of Darth Vader are more of a collaborative effort. You never really have just one person playing the character, even thought there are some real iconic perforances here
Darth Vader first apeared in 1977's Star Wars. He was a combination of performances; 6'6" bobybuilder David Prowse wore his costume on-screen, but his voice was performed, fameously, by screen legend James Earl Jones. As the series went on in 1980's Empire Strikes Back, Vader's actual sword-fighting was all done by veteran fight choreographer and olympic fencer Bob Anderson.
When Vader's helmet finally came off in the final minutes of the last movie in the original trilogy, 1983's Return of the Jedi, he was played by british actor Sebastian Shaw (no relation to the X-Men villain).
In the decades between film trilogies, the main source for Star Wars content was video games by Lucasarts. 6'5" Visual Effects Artist C. Andrew Nelon wore the costume in so many games that he's actually acknowledged as the most prolific performer of the character. While many voice actors played the part, the man who did it the most was Scott Lawrence, who is best known as Comander Turner on JAG.
1999's Phantom Menace was the start of a new Star Wars trilogy, featuring Darth Vader's origin story. A young Anakin was played by 9-year-old Jake Lloyd. Nowadays, toxic Star Wars fandom is a known commodity, but at the time Jake just wasn't ready for so much negativity. He wound up quitting acting forever.
The following two movies of the second trilogy, 2002's Attack of the Clones & 2005's Revenge of the Sith, featured an older Anakin, played by Hayden Christensen, who actually got to wear the Darth Vader armor in the final moments of the last movie.
Dexter's Lab & Samurai Jack creater Genndy Tartakovsky created three seasons of a traditionally animated series on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005, running between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Anakin was voiced by Matt Lucas.
This animated series was followed up by a 2008 3D animated feature film that expanded the world of the animated series, which was then followed up by an ongoing series than ran on Cartoon Network, and is often considered the best representation of this era of Star Wars continuity. Anakin is voiced by Matt Lanter, who has gone on to perform the role in a variety of other media.
Most recently, the classic version of Darth Vader was featured in 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. James Earl Jones returned to do his voice, while Vader's on screen performance was again split, this time between a physical actor, 6'6" Spencer Wilding, and stunt performer Daniel Naprous.