Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey might be more renowned for its startling imagery than anything else, but its most quotable lines come from HAL 9000 – the sentient computer that controls the Discovery One spaceship and threatens the life of astronaut protagonist Dave Bowman. The dulcet, deadpan delivery of that line – “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” – has entered the cultural lexicon, while the character’s chilling demise, singing ‘Daisy, Daisy’ while being de-actived by Dave, remains one of 2001's most famous scenes.
The man behind that performance, Douglas Rain, has sadly passed away at the age of 90 from natural causes. Rain played HAL twice, first in Kubrick’s 1968 film, and then again in Peter Hyam’s 1984 sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact. In that film, HAL is re-actived in an attempt to discover why it turned against the Discovery One crew. Elsewhere in his career, Rain was a Shakespearean stage actor who starred in 32 seasons of the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada. He also played Henry V, Twelfth Night’s Malvolio, and The Tempest’s Stephano in TV productions through the 1960s.
While HAL’s red dot design is iconic in itself, the character stems primarily from Rain’s brilliantly unsettling performance. In Empire’s list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters, voted for by readers, HAL 9000 came in at #90 – not bad for a talking computer. Watch the classic “Open the pod bay doors, HAL” scene here:
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