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Peter Cullen looked to his brother, Larry, when it came to developing the voice of heroic Transformer, Optimus Prime.

Larry was a captain in the Marine Corps and a Vietnam War veteran who had been awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

“When he came home, there was a marked difference in his overall demeanour,” says Cullen, in an interview with Postmedia. “But his advice to me was that to be a leader, be strong and compassionate. Don’t be a yelling, screaming, Hollywood phoney. The tone of his voice was very, very clear and compassionate and soft with depth. I went to the audition and there it was. It was Larry, my brother, on the pages in front of me. That’s how I handled it.”

Cullen has told the story before. But it goes a long way in revealing why Optimus Prime is not only the Montreal-born voice actor’s most famous creation but also his favourite.

Other actors have voiced the role, but it’s safe to say that Cullen is the actor best known for giving life to the heroic leader of the Autobots, a giant robot from another planet who can transform into a semi-trailer truck.

Cullen first got the role back in the 1980s for the animated series, which itself was based on a popular line of Japanese toys. He has played the role for various mediums over the years, including the 2007 mega-budgeted, live-action blockbuster. Directed by Michael Bay, the film begat a lucrative franchise and plenty of work for Cullen, who has voiced the character in all four sequels and its 2018 spin-off, Bumblebee.

Maybe it’s because of those poignant origins, but it’s a job that Cullen has taken to heart over the years. In fact, he took a stand against a small snippet of dialogue that he felt was inappropriate, a battle he ultimately lost.

“I refused to use a couple or words and I was forced to,” he says. “My instinct was that it was wrong and it was something he would never say. And the audience felt the same way. I don’t even like repeating them so I won’t. It wasn’t slanderous or anything, it was just the choice of words and temper. I took the character very seriously and I still do. But, come to think of it, I probably could have read the line satirically and gotten away with it. But I’m making too much of a thing out of it. I did then and now I am again. It’s no big deal.”

In fact, Cullen said the transformation from animated to live-action was surprisingly smooth.

“When it went to film, the big film, it was a leap,” he says. “I was curious to see how much of it would remain the same. I would say about 98 per cent of it has. But there was some challenges in doing that. You had to be a little more responsive to the human characters because of Michael Bay’s direction. He wanted to see if you could act, communicate with a human being. The rest of it was just being in a studio with 14 other guys and gals and doing your script and having a ball.”

Cullen may not have set out to become a voice actor, but his background of acting, announcing and radio seems a perfect precursor for the profession. He attended the National Theatre School in Montreal while doing one-hour radio dramas for the CBC. He worked in various Canadian cities in theatre before making the move to television and radio back in his hometown, including a late-night gig for CGKM on a show called Milkman’s Matinee. That led to some comedy pieces and gigs for CBC television. From there, he went to Hollywood in the early 1970s to work as an announcer on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour and The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show, among others.

“I was disillusioned a little bit about acting but, what the heck, you just keep plugging on,” he says.

While Optimus Prime may be his best-known character, Cullen has provided voices to dozens over the years including sad-sack donkey Eeyore for various Winnie the Pooh projects.

“You just project it down and just be monotone,” says Cullen. “Just don’t use too many inflections,” he adds, in a perfect Eeyore voice.

But his strangest creation may be the odd, and uncredited, vocal effects he developed for the titular creature in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger action-horror flick Predator.

At the time of his audition, Cullen had injured his voice when working out the boisterous roars of King Kong for the 1986 film King Kong Lives. So the strange, other-worldly and deeply creepy gurgle/rattle that became the trademark of the Predator was in part created because he didn’t want to strain his voice further with monster sounds.

“I just didn’t want to project anything but I had to come up with a signature, so there it was,” he says. “It was an upside-down horseshoe crab on the beach in Massachusetts with bubbles coming out of it and the crackling sound of the bubbles. That’s how I got that voice.”

“Hey, we’re strange people in voice-over,” he adds with a laugh.

Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019