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Depicted by Stanley Kubrick as a camera lens with a bright red dot – a cyclops eye having a lip reading ability – the HAL 9000 speaking computer has somewhat stolen the show in the 1968 movie 2001: The Space Odyssey.
Douglas Rain, the Canadian theater actor who died in Stratford, Ontario, died at the age of 90. HAL is associated with the Bard and is located on the banks of the Avon River.
Shakespearian, Rain spent much of his professional life in the Stratford Festival.
Artistic director Antoni Cimolino said Rain shared many of HAL's qualities: "Precision, steel strength, enigma and infinite intelligence, as well as a sense of diabolical humor."
A former child actor on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Rain studied theater in London before returning to Canada in 1953, where he played the lead role in Stratford's inaugural production. Richard IIIand served as a cover for Alec Guinness in the lead role in 1953.
Rain played at the Shakespearean Festival for 32 seasons, settling two blocks away from the theater and erecting a partial model of his stage in his attic, where he practiced the night after the rehearsals. He described his work as a "glorified detective", a job in which he had to examine scripts to learn more about a character's background and motivation.
Actor Marion Day, who played alongside Rain several times, said that he had compared the actor's job to carpentry: "It was something very good made. You could put your hand on it and not perceive the joints. "
Although he spent most of his career in Canada, he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1972 for his supporting role as William Cecil, the cunning state-of-the-art Vivat! Vivat Reginaplaywright Robert Bolt discusses the rivalry between Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary Queen of Scots.
New York Times Writer Gerry Flahive pointed out in April that the voices of today's artificial intelligence, from Siri to Alexa, owe to HAL "the human qualities of what the personality of a sentient machine should be".
Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark originally wanted a female voice for HAL.
The rain took over the role in a sequel, 2010: The year of contact (1984), written and directed by Peter Hyams. But he resisted the marketing efforts of his performance, refusing to give voice to an Apple advertisement broadcast at the 1999 Super Bowl in the United States.
He also cultivated techniques to avoid the attention of fans who asked him to "open the doors of the pod bay," creating "a secret ringtone" for friends who wanted to join him on the phone. his home and designing a rapid escape route from the Stratford Theater.
"It would be changed before anyone could think of being changed," said Marion Day, "and get off in the underworld under the stage, get in a tunnel next to the public and leave while he was getting up their seats and collecting their programs – with his cap on their eyes so that people do not know that it was him. "
Douglas James Rain was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in March 1928. His father was a switchman with the Canadian National Railway Company and his mother was a nurse who encouraged him to play, starting with a appearance on CBC radio at the age of eight. . Rain later recalled that he had to stand on a wooden crate to reach the microphone.
A graduate of the University of Manitoba in 1950, he studied at the former Old Vic Theater School in London, then directed by actor Glen Byam Shaw, before being auditioned by director Tyrone Guthrie, who then brought him to Stratford. The first productions of the festival took place in a tent, where line readings were sometimes accompanied by cheers from a nearby baseball field.
Rain has appeared in series directed by Guthrie, including Christopher Marlowe. Tamburlaine the Great, who arrived on Broadway in 1956, and a production under the mask of Sophocles Oedipus Rex, filmed for a wide release in 1957.
He then played leading roles in productions of Othello, King John and Henry V, Played with Maggie Smith in a production of 1978 Macbeth and appeared as Shylock in The merchant of Venice in 1996, two years before his last season with the festival.
In addition to his work in Stratford, Rain has conducted for several years the Anglophone Actors Section at the National Theater School of Canada and has performed in Canadian theaters including the National Center for the Arts. Arts, the Tarragon Theater and the Shaw Festival.
His marriages with Lois Shaw and Martha Henry, another Stratford artist, ended in a divorce. The survivors include two sons from his first marriage, a daughter from his second marriage, and a granddaughter.
In March, Rain told New York Times he had never seen 2001: The Space Odyssey.
Douglas Rain, Canadian actor, born March 13, 1928, died on November 11, 2018
© Washington Post
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