Douglas Rain

Douglas Rain (May 9, 1928 – November 11, 2018) was a Canadian actor born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Scottish parents Mary and James Rain, who had emigrated from Glasgow. His father worked as a rail yard switchman and his mother was a nurse. Rain earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Manitoba in 1950 before pursuing formal acting training at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta and the Old Vic Theatre School in London, England.

Rain's stage career was anchored by a long association with the Stratford Festival of Canada, which he helped establish as a founding member in 1953 and with which he remained active as a performer until 1998. Among his Stratford work was a production of Henry V staged in Stratford, Ontario, that was adapted for television in 1966. His Broadway career spanned from 1956 to 1972 and included appearances in Tamburlaine the Great, The Broken Jug, The Golden Age, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Vivat! Vivat Regina!. His performance in Vivat! Vivat Regina! earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1972.

Despite his extensive stage work, Rain became most widely recognized for providing the voice of HAL 9000, the supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick selected him for the role after hearing his narration of a short documentary called Universe, later describing him as possessing the right quality for the character. Rain recorded all of his dialogue during post-production in a ten-hour session conducted over two days with Kubrick in London. His voice was at times processed through an electronic device called the Eltro information rate changer. Rain later recalled that he did not believe the sessions had gone well, and in a 2018 interview with the New York Times he revealed he had never seen the finished film. He returned to the role for the 1984 sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and briefly parodied it in a sketch on Second City Television in which Rick Moranis played Merv Griffin hosting his talk show in outer space.

Rain was married twice, first to Lois Shaw and then to actress Martha Henry, and had three children and a grandchild. He died of natural causes on November 11, 2018, at St. Mary's Memorial Hospital in St. Marys, Ontario, at the age of 90.