Douglas Rain provided the voice of HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Rain was a Canadian actor who was initially approached to provide narration for the film. Kubrick and co-writer Arthur C. Clarke instead used his calm, measured voice for HAL, the sentient computer controlling the Discovery One spacecraft. The restrained delivery helped make HAL sound polite, intelligent, and unsettling rather than conventionally threatening.
The film’s human crew members were played by Keir Dullea as David Bowman and Gary Lockwood as Frank Poole, while William Sylvester played Dr. Heywood Floyd. Those actors are therefore sometimes confused with Rain when viewers remember HAL’s dialogue. Rain himself did not appear on screen as the computer; his contribution was primarily vocal.
Released in 1968, 2001 became famous for HAL’s unemotional speech and the phrase “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Rain later received a Canadian Film Award for his voice performance, although HAL is represented visually by a red camera lens rather than a conventional body.