Robert Duval ???
A friend of my told me that the whale in this picture Free Willy wasn't an actual whale but played by Robert Duval....
Is it Robert Duval???
I can't tell if you are joking or not, but it was a real whale named Keiko. Keiko died back in 2003.
shareI watched a show on Keiko a couple of years ago and most of the scenes in the Free Willy movies were of a machanical whale.
shareRobert Duval was actually consulted for the designing of the mechanics of the fake whale. he has a hidden talent for such things, there was an incredible article about it Time magazine around 1994, ill try searching for it online. so in a way, yes, duval really was willy.
shareFor all the scenes that they show of a whale in the tank is a real whale named Keiko (who died in Dec. 2003, as noted previously). When "Willy" is being transfered and jumps over Jesse,this is a mechanical whale and animated. They couldn't risk moving a killer whale just for a movie. I assume Robert Duval controlled the mechanical whales that were actually motor boats disguised as whales (for the other two movies, only mechanical whales were used with bits and pieces of wild orca footage).
In the first movie, they actually used three mechanical whales in the last few scenes when Willy is freed. One was a full sized version, for when Willy is in the water. One was only a half-section of the killer whale which was used when they were towing the whale to the jetty and used to reduce the weight when they burst through the gate. The third mechanical whale was a three-fourths version of the whale, used in certain shots to make it easier.