Mike Myers paid tribute to his Austin Powers costar Verne Troyer less than two weeks after the actor behind the beloved character Mini-Me died at the age of 49.
“Verne was a fantastic human being,” the Love Guru star, 54, said during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, May 2. “I worked with him for a long time. [He was] a great comedian. I’ve always just wanted to make that point. As written, Mini-Me is, like, almost a prop. But he brought it up off the page, made it better than written, and we ended up just giving him more and more stuff to do.”
Troyer was best known for his role as the mischievous clone of Myers’ character, Dr. Evil, in the franchise sequels Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002).
Myers went on to call his late costar a “great physical comedian, a great dancer [and] just a fantastic guy.” He also noted that Troyer, who was born with cartilage-hair hypoplasia, exceeded expectations because he “wasn’t supposed to live past his teens.”
“Verne brought so much love to people,” the comic added. “Verne was very small, like, very small. And every day you see him, you go, ‘Wow, that is a small human.’ But by the end of the day, you just saw Verne. It just sort of went away. … He was part of the cast — and fantastic. I miss him.”
As previously reported, Troyer died on April 21. “Verne was an extremely caring individual. He wanted to make everyone smile, be happy and laugh,” his spokesperson said in a statement to Us Weekly. “Anybody in need, he would help to any extent possible. Verne hoped he made a positive change with the platform he had and worked towards spreading that message every day.”
The cause of death has not been revealed, but the Los Angeles Coroner’s office told Us on April 23 that the stuntman had been “admitted to the hospital with a high level of alcohol in his system.”
