Scots/Canadian actor who voiced HAL the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Born: March 13, 1928;

Died: November 11, 2018

DOUGLAS Rain, who has died aged 90, was a Canadian actor who was celebrated as one of the finest stage performers of his generation in his home country. He was particularly known for his four-decade association with the Stratford Festival, a widely celebrated Shakespearean celebration in the town of Stratford, Ontario, while he took a number of lower-key parts in film and television, particularly in adaptations of Shakespeare.

Rain’s defining role, however, was one which went on to be an enduring touchstone of 20th century cinema, even though Rain was never seen onscreen. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece of existential science fiction 2001: A Space Odyssey – which was co-written by the science-fiction author Arthur C Clarke and adapted from Clarke’s short story The Sentinel – Rain voiced HAL 9000, the artificially intelligent computer controlling Discovery One, a spaceship on a journey through the solar system to make hopeful contact with an alien intelligence in orbit around Jupiter.

Scientifically precise and deeply immersed in the challenges and possibilities of leaving planet Earth, Kubrick and Clarke’s film pondered the challenges of humanity giving over control of its basic functions to artificial intelligence through the ‘character’ of HAL (an acronym for Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer). Initially a useful and indispensable labour-saving device, HAL’s fierce, almost human logic response towards self-preservation sees ‘him’ murder one and attempt to murder another of the crew when they discuss deactivating him because of a possible malfunction.

Rain’s voice-only performance is perfectly-pitched to convey both HAL’s cold machine logic and its blossoming awareness as a sentient being. Represented by just an unblinking red eye and a soft monotone, delicate modulations in the computer’s voice lend an air of hard-edged menace as Keir Dullea’s astronaut Dave Bowman begs to be let back onto the craft from a spacewalk and HAL intones, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”; and the fear present when he regresses to his first moments in operation – his ‘childhood’ – upon disconnection is palpable, his frantic version of the nursery rhyme Daisy Bell both sad and chilling.

Among those originally considered for the role of HAL were the broadcaster Alistair Cooke and the actors Jason Robards and Martin Balsam, but Kubrick found them “too emotional”. Rain was eventually chosen after a painstaking search for a voice which was, according to the director’s notes, “sincere, intelligent, disarming, the intelligent friend next door… neither patronising, nor is it intimidating, nor is it pompous, over dramatic or actorly. Despite this, it is interesting.”

Kubrick was reportedly partly inspired by a 1960 Canadian documentary about space travel, which Rain had narrated. Although Rain turned down interviews about HAL and opportunities to spoof it in high-profile adverts, he did return to the role for Peter Hyams’s 1984 sequel to Kubrick’s original, 2010: The Year We Made Contact. The film was met with a mixed critical reception, but did earn five Academy Award nominations. 

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1928, Douglas ‘Dougie’ Rain was the child of Scottish parents, migrants from Glasgow. He was an enthusiastic amateur actor in his youth, going on to study performance at the University of Manitoba and the Banff Centre for Continuing Education in Alberta.

His dismay at the shallowness of the Canadian theatre scene at the time meant he was pleased to take up a two-year scholarship at the Old Vic Theatre School in London in 1950. He did not find the experience as rewarding as he hoped, however, and an offer to join the founding Stratford Festival Company in 1953 drew him back home; in later years, his fellow players at the company included William Shatner, who found his own science-fiction fame as Star Trek’s Captain James T Kirk.

There is an irony to the fact that the legacy of such an accomplished and widely admired theatre actor will be most defined by a role in which he was unseen and lack of emotion was a virtue, but those in his industry knew and celebrated Rain appropriately. He appeared onstage alongside Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov and Maggie Smith, performed As You Like It before the Queen in 1959, and was nominated for a Tony Award for his role in Robert Bolt’s Vivat! Vivat! Regina! on Broadway in 1972.

His final role for the Stratford Festival was in Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons in 1998, and his final theatre role before retirement was in George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House at the Shaw Festival in Niagara in 1999.

He is survived by two sons, a daughter, a daughter-in-law and one grandchild.

DAVID POLLOCK