Arts & Entertainment

Mini Darth Vader Returns Home From Hospital

Max Page, 7, leaves Children's Hospital Los Angels four days after having a heart valve replaced.

The Force is with Max Page.

Max, the 7-year-old actor best known for playing a pint-sized Darth Vader in a 2011 Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial, was discharged from Children's Hospital Los Angeles Monday, just four days after undergoing surgery to have a pulmonary heart valve replaced.

"Well, I'm excited about a lot of things, especially having a milkshake," Max told reporters at the hospital just before he headed home to San Clemente with his parents and brother Els.

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Max was smiling and exuberant as he got ready to head home, although he conceded, "I do feel a little pain in my chest."

Max was born with a congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot. Doctors said the valve-replacement surgery was something that had been anticipated—it was just a matter of time.

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Last week, it was time.

The youngster has appeared on "The Young and the Restless" and "Prime Suspect," but he is best known for the Super Bowl commercial in which he wears a Darth Vader costume and tries—unsuccessfully—to use the "force" around the house. He gets a shock when the "force" appears to start the Volkswagen in the driveway, but it's really his father using the car's remote from inside the house.

He became known as far as the airwaves—and YouTube—could reach as mini Darth Vader.

Max has been treated at Children's Hospital Los Angeles since he was an infant. He is now an official "junior ambassador" for the hospital, speaking to groups and helping raise money for pediatric research and treatments. He has also visited Washington, D.C., to help oppose cuts to Medicaid.

Max's father, Buck Page, told reporters that even though Max has been through a series of operations in his young life, seeing his son being wheeled into surgery "does not get any easier."

"It was equally as difficult, as painful," he said. "We've named it the 'hallway moment.' So parents that have been through what we've been through understand that, it's that moment when you're standing in the hallway and you no longer can be in control. ... It did not get any easier."

—City News Service


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