2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Cast : Then and Now | You'd Never Recognize

Ajouté : 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Open the pod bay doors. Hell, >> I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

[00:00:05]>> The man who voiced the supercomputer that scared a generation of movie goers, dead at 90 in a Canadian hospital, having never watched the film that made him immortal. The actor who played the second astronaut, the one Hal kills first, dropped dead at 57 in his dressing room at the Lyric Theater during the interval of a play. and the director made one of the greatest films ever shot. Got one Oscar in his entire career for visual effects on this very picture. Died six days after finishing his final movie. He never lived to see the year 2001. Stay with me. You know the film The Monolith, The Apes, The Bone in the Sky, The Red Eye. Made for $10.5 million in 1968. Pulled in over 140. Most of them are gone now. The ones who are left have stories you've never heard. The Voice in the Red Eye, Douglas Re. Douglas James Rain, born May 9th, 1928 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The son of Scottish parents, his father was a railard switchman. His mother was a nurse. He studied at the Old Vic Theater School in London, then helped found the Stratford Festival of Canada in 1953, the most important Shakespeare Theater in the country. He spent over 30 years there. He understudied Alec Guinness in the inaugural season, playing Richard III. He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1972. In 1968, Stanley Kubri heard him narrate a Canadian documentary called Universe and called him in London. RA recorded every single line of HAL 9000 in a single 10-hour session over 2 days. He told Kubri afterward in his own words, "If you could have been a ghost at the recording, you would have thought it was a load of rubbish. He never saw the finished film." Hall was ranked the 13th greatest movie villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

[00:01:42]>> I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. became one of the most parodyied lines in cinema history. And the man who delivered it in two days on a sound stage in London in 1968 went home and went back to Shakespeare. He continued performing at Stratford for 30 more years. Most theater audiences in Canada had no idea the voice they were listening to in King Leer McBth was the same voice that had haunted a generation of movie goers. Douglas Re died on November 11th, 2018 of natural causes at St. Mary's Memorial Hospital outside Stratford, Ontario. He was 90 years old.

[00:02:16]He had still never watched the movie Dead in the Dressing Room. Leonard Rosser. Leonard Rosser, born October 21st, 1926 in Waverree, Liverpool. In 2001, he played Dr. Andre Smeislov, the Russian scientist Floyd encounters on the space station. In Britain, he was already a comic legend by the time he died, rising damp as the Sidi landlord Rupert Riggsby, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perne, the Senzano Vermouth commercials with Joan Collins, where he splashed her with the drink. He worked with Kubri again on Barry Lyndon in 1975. On the night of October 5th, 1984, he was performing in Joe Orton's dark farce loot at the Lyric Theater in London. He played the corrupt police inspector Truscuit, a role that suited his angular, sweating, paranoid energy perfectly. During the interval between acts, his dresser walked into his dressing room. Rosier was slumped in his chair. Heart attack. He was 57 years old. The audience didn't know. They were rustling programs and chatting about the first act. The understudy went on for the second half. The chauffeer finished.

[00:03:15]The next night, the show ran again without him. The mime who became a man ape, Daniel Richter. In 1966, Stanley Kubri was struggling. The opening sequence of his new film, 20 minutes of prehistoric ape men discovering tools, wasn't working. He didn't want actors in monkey suits. He wanted something real.

[00:03:32]A friend told him about an American mime running a small troop in London. Daniel Richter, born June 15th, 1939 in Darian, Connecticut. Kubri met him two weeks later. RTOR was hired to choreograph and star in the entire Dawn of Man sequence as the lead man ape Moon Watcher. RTOR spent hours at the London Zoo watching real apes, particularly a popular gorilla named Guy. He studied their gestures. He coached an entire cast of mimes to move like them. The 18 minutes he created, including the moment Moon Watcher hurls the bone into the sky, is one of the most celebrated sequences in cinema history. After 2001, Richtor befriended John Lennon and Yokoono Ono.

[00:04:10]He lived and worked with them from 1969 to 1973. First at their estate at Tittenhurst Park, then in New York. He appears in the original Imagine music video, sitting in the lavender room at Tittenhurst as Lenin plays the white piano. He helped Lennon and Ono with their early art films. Arthur C. Clark once called him the most famous unknown actor in the world. Today, Dan Richtor is 86 years old. He lives in Sierra Madre, California. He leads Sierra Club mountaineering trips and teaches rock climbing. He is one of three principal performers from 2001 still alive in 2026. The prophet on the island, Arthur C. born December 16th, 1917 in Minehead, Somerset, England. He flew radar missions in the Royal Air Force during World War II. In 1945, he published a technical paper in Wireless World titled Extraterrestrial Relays. In it, he laid out in detail the mathematical and engineering principles of using geostationary satellites for global communication. He did this 25 years before the first communication satellite would be launched. Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 km above Earth is officially named the Clark orbit by the International Astronomical Union. In 1956, he moved to son, modern-day Sri Lanka, to be near the ocean. He was a passionate scuba diver who said the closest experience to weightlessness in space was being underwater. He spent the rest of his life there. His short story, The Sentinel, written in 1948, became the seed Kubri built 2001 around. The two men wrote the screenplay in the novel in parallel, meeting in London, exchanging drafts, arguing about everything from the ending to whether Hal should be male or female. The original computer character was named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom and had a female voice. Clark developed postpolio syndrome in 1984 and lived his last 20 years partly in a wheelchair. He was kned in 1998. Arthur C. Clark died of heart failure on March 19th, 2008 in Columbbo, Sri Lanka. He was 90 years old. One of the last three giants of golden age science fiction alongside Isaac Azimov and Robert Heinline. He outlived them all. The director who got one Oscar, Stanley Kubri, born July 26th, 1928 in the Bronx, New York, started as a staff photographer at Look magazine when he was 17. Made Dr. Strange Love, made 2001, made A Clockwork Orange, made Barry Lyndon, made The Shining, made Full Metal Jacket, made Eyes Wide Shut. Across an entire career as one of the most acclaimed directors in cinema, Stanley Kubri was nominated for 13 Academy Awards. He won exactly one for the visual effects on 2001, A Space Odyssey.

[00:06:43]He never won best director. He never won best picture. He never won best screenplay. From 1978 onward, he lived as a recluse at Child Wickbury Manor, his estate in Hertfordshire, England. He almost never gave interviews. He kept his set so secret that often only he and the camera operator knew what was being shot. Crew members didn't see scripts.

[00:07:02]Actors didn't see scripts. He once shot a scene with Shelley Duval on The Shining 127 times, a Guinness World Record, because he wouldn't tell her what he wanted. In March of 1999, he showed Warner Bros. executives the final cut of eyes wide shut at his home. 6 days later, on March 7th, 1999, his wife Christian found him dead in their bedroom. Heart attack in his sleep. He was 70 years old. He didn't live to see the year 2001. He didn't live to see the film named after that year released in cinemas one more time. Eyes wide shut came out 4 months after his death. To this day, fans argue whether the version released was the one he wanted. The American in London, William Sylvester.

[00:07:41]William Sylvester played Dr. Haywood Floyd, the bureaucrat whose conversation with the Russians on the space station opens the second act. He gives the speech about the secret on the moon. He sees the monolith. He's the audience's first guide. The role required him to be calm, smooth, and completely opaque. A cold war era diplomat in zero gravity, lying to his Soviet counterparts about what they'd really found up there. Born January 31st, 1922 in Oakland, California, served in the United States Navy during the Second World War. After the war, he moved to Britain and built a career across dozens of British films, most of them small, most of them forgotten. After 2001, he came back to Hollywood for smaller roles, busting in 1974, The Hindenburg in 1975. Then he quietly retired from acting in the early 1980s and moved back to America. He lived out his last years in Sacramento, California. William Sylvester died on January 25th, 1995. He was 72 years old, 6 days before what would have been his 73rd birthday. The astronaut who came back, Kier Doulia. Kier Atwood Dullia born May 30th, 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio.

[00:08:45]His parents owned a Greenwich Village bookstore. He trained at the neighborhood Playhouse School of the New York City. Stanley Kubri saw his work in the 1965 thriller Bunny Lake is Missing and offered him the role of Dave Bowman in 2001 without an audition. Dulia was 31 when he played the man who outlives Hal walks into the impossible hotel room at the edge of Jupiter and becomes the star child. He once said being associated with just one film despite having made over 20 was like the model who posed for the Mona Lisa. She might have posed for a lot of good painters but all we know now is the one hanging in the Louv. His line open the pod bay doors please Hal is on the American Film Institute's list of the hundred greatest movie quotes. He reprised David Bowman in the 1984 sequel 2010, The Year We Make Contact. He co-founded the Theater Artist Workshop of Westport in 1983.

[00:09:36]He's been married to actress Mia Dylan since 1999. In 2026, Kier Dullia is 89 years old. He still tours fan conventions, sometimes alongside his old co-star Gary Lockwood. The astronaut who came back from Infinity is still here.

[00:09:50]The stuntman turned astronaut Gary Lockwood. Gary Lockwood, born John Gary Yurrosk February 21st, 1937 in Van News, California. He went to Ucla on a football scholarship. He started his Hollywood career not as an actor but as a stuntman and as Anthony Perkins standin. Two years before 2001, he played Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell in the second Star Trek pilot where No Man has gone before. He almost became part of the original Trek crew.

[00:10:15]Kubri saw him and cast him as doctor.

[00:10:17]Frank Pool, the astronaut Hal murders first, drifting away into the void as his oxygen runs out. The scene of his body tumbling silently through space remains one of the most quietly terrifying moments in science fiction cinema. He was married to actress Stephanie Powers from 1966 to 1972. Gary Lockwood is 88 years old in 2026. He still travels to conventions. He and Kier Dullia, the two astronauts who walked through the door at the edge of the universe, are still walking through doors together. The Quiet Survivor.

[00:10:46]Margaret Tisac. Margaret Ma Tisac. Born September 9th, 1931 in West Ham, Essex, England, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

[00:10:55]In 2001, she played Elena, the Russian scientist on Space Station 5 alongside Leonard Rosser. A small role, but everything she did was small in scale and large in impact. She won the BAFTA for best actress in 1970 for the first Churchills. She played Antonia, mother of Emperor Claudius, in Eyes Claudius in 1976. In 1990, she won the Tony Award for best featured actress for Lettuce and Loveage. Late in life, she became a passionate advocate for older actresses and the lack of parts written for women over 50. She was made a commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2010.

[00:11:28]Margaret Tisac died on June 25th, 2011 in Black Heath, London. She was 79 years old. Hal's voice gone at 90 in a Stratford hospital having never watched the movie. Rosser dead in his dressing room at 57 midplay. Sylvester quietly gone in Sacramento at 72. Kubri dead in his sleep at his English estate 6 days after his final film, Never Living to see the year his masterpiece was named after. Clark gone in Sri Lanka at 90.

[00:11:54]Taizak at 79. A lot of names, one cinematic monument, a lot of grief sitting underneath it. Which one hit you the hardest? Tell me in the comments.

[00:12:02]And if you stay subscribed, there's an 11th story. The seven-year-old girl in this movie, Stanley Kubri's own daughter, Viven Kubri. She filmed her father directing The Shining when she was 17. She was supposed to score his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. She quit, joined the Church of Scientology, and largely vanished from public life. I'll tell you what's known of her story next