Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor best known as the voice of ship’s HAL 9000 computer in the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died aged 90.
Born in Winnipeg in 1928, Rain won a scholarship in 1950 to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic.
Rain had provided the voiceover for a 1960 Canadian science documentary called Universe, which profoundly impressed Kubrick who, according to Rain, watched it almost 100 times.
In a 1981 interview Rain said: “It is not that I haven’t wanted to do movies, it’s just that I’ve never been approached.