(NBC News) -Douglas Rain, a Canadian actor best known for voicing the HAL 9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick’s classic film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” died on Sunday. He was 90.
Rain was a found member of The Stratford Festival in Ontario. The company announced his death over Twitter.
Today we lost Douglas Rain, a member of our founding company and a hugely esteemed presence on our stages for 32 seasons. He will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. pic.twitter.com/dxcffgGEiA
— Stratford Festival (@stratfest) November 12, 2018
Rain provided the voice in “2001” for the HAL 9000, a sentient computer controlling a spaceship bound for Jupiter.
Rain’s sinuous, detached reading of HAL’s lines made the computer’s murders of three astronauts as they slept in suspended animation and its subsequent stranding of astronaut Frank Poole to die in open space all the more shocking.
