Roach was turned down as Darth Vader in Star Wars; however, its director, George Lucas, subsequently cast him as several burly villains in the Indiana Jones film series in the 1980s. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he played two roles: the first being a giant Sherpa who fights Jones in the bar in Nepal, the second being a German Luftwaffe mechanic who fistfights with Jones before being killed by an aircraft's propeller blades on the airstrip in Egypt. In the next film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Roach played a Thuggee guard in a mine who fights with Jones before being killed in a rock crusher. His final appearance in the series was as a Gestapo officer in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he appears only briefly as the character's fight with Jones was cut because director Steven Spielberg considered the scene "too long" and served as a subplot.