Douglas Rain, actor who voiced computer in ‘2001,’ dies at 90
Performer renowned as Shakespearean
The film featured a cast of prehistoric apes, scientists investigating a mysterious black monolith on the moon, astronauts bound for Jupiter, and an embryonic “star child” floating above Earth.
But to critics, fans and the 1968 movie’s nominal leading man, actor Keir Dullea, the most compelling character in “2001: A Space Odyssey” was far and away a talking computer, the HAL 9000. Depicted by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick as a camera lens with a glowing red dot — a cycloptic eye that enabled him to read lips — HAL was voiced to chilling effect by Douglas Rain, a Shakespearean actor celebrated as one of the finest classical stage performers in Canada.
Rain was 90 when he died Nov. 11 at a hospital in St. Marys, Ontario, about a dozen miles from Stratford, where he had lived and long performed with the repertory company of the Stratford Festival. The festival announced his death but did not give a precise cause.
In a statement, Stratford artistic director Antoni Cimolino called Rain one of Canadian theater’s “greatest talents and a guiding light in its development,” adding that he “shared many of the same qualities as Kubrick’s iconic creation: precision, strength of steel, enigma and infinite intelligence, as well as a wicked sense of humor.”
A onetime child actor for the radio broadcaster Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Rain studied at Laurence Olivier’s drama school in Britain before returning to Canada in 1953, where he played supporting parts in the Stratford’s inaugural production, “Richard III,” and served as the understudy for Alec Guinness in the title role.
Rain performed at the Shakespearean festival for 32 seasons, settling some two blocks from the theater and erecting a partial model of its thrust stage in his attic, where he practiced at night after rehearsals. He described his work as that of a “glorified detective,” a craft in which he was driven to pore over scripts for insight into a character’s background and motivation.
At other times, said actress Marion Day, who performed alongside Rain at several Stratford productions, he likened acting to carpentry: “It was something that was very finely done. You could run your hand over it and not perceive joints.”
When Rain delivered his lines, she added, “it was as if the language and himself and everything just disappeared. There were just ideas and thoughts and complex moments happening inside me. He took away a barrier between me and the writer. These things were happening for the first time, as if no one had ever thought them or said them before, as if they were newly minted.”
He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1972 for his supporting role as William Cecil.