NEW YORK (AP) — A Canadian actor who played some of Shakespeare’s most intriguing characters onstage but perhaps is best known for supplying the creepily calm voice of the rogue computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” has died. Douglas Rain was 90.
The Stratford Festival says Rain died Sunday of natural causes just outside Stratford, Ontario. He was in the festival’s founding company and spent 32 seasons performing there, until 1998.
His roles at Stratford included playing Claudio in “Measure for Measure” in 1954, Malvolio in “Twelfth Night” in 1957 and Edgar in “King Lear” in 1964.
But it was the aloof voice of HAL where Rain entered the public’s consciousness. The American Film Institute named the malevolent computer the 13th greatest movie villain of all time.