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. Rain died from natural causes in hospital in Ontario.

Rain was not the first actor cast in the part. Kubrick had originally asked Martin Balsam to provide the computer’s voice, but changed his mind at the last minute, explaining in a 1969 interview that “Marty just sounded a little bit too colloquially American, whereas Rain had the kind of bland mid-Atlantic accent we felt was right for the part”.

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. Originally hired to produce voiceover narration, which was later abandoned, Rain recorded the dialogue in 1967 in nine and a half hours, including making 50 different versions of the celebrated Daisy Bell singing sequence that plays as HAL is being disconnected.

Douglas Rain in 1998. Photograph: Jeff Goode/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Born in Winnipeg in 1928, Rain won a scholarship in 1950 to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic. However, he did not enjoy the experience, later saying: “I was very depressed by the stagnant atmosphere which pervaded the school and all of the English theatre. I felt that England had lost all feeling of the true essence of theatre.” He returned to Canada in 1953 and became a founding member of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Company. He remained associated with the festival for over four decades, acting there until 1998. He was also nominated for a Tony award for the 1972 Broadway production of Robert Bolt’s Vivat! Vivat Regina!

Despite HAL’s celebrated status, Rain was never cast in a feature film in a live acting role – a fact that he put down to his reputation of an interpreter of classical roles on stage. 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. People seem to think that when you do classical things you can’t do anything else.” The closest he came was a 1957 film version of a stage production of Oedipus Rex.