Peter Cullen, the Optimus Prime voice actor who defined the character across four decades of cartoons, movies, and video games, has died at 85. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed his death. It comes during a stretch of losses across entertainment that also includes Dolly Parton, Yayoi Kusama, and Red Alert 3 star Tim Curry.
Cullen voiced Optimus Prime in nearly every major appearance of the character since the original 1984 Transformers cartoon. That run included the Michael Bay film series and games such as Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and Transformers: Devastation.
Reviewing War for Cybertron for PC Gamer, Dan Stapleton singled out the thrill of hearing Cullen’s authoritative delivery again. It was a small confirmation that players were getting the genuine article, not a soundalike. Whether the game was excellent or the movie was mediocre, that same voice gave it away every time. Players knew instantly they were hearing the real Optimus Prime.
An Optimus Prime voice actor with deep roots in games
Cullen’s connection to video games predates the Transformers franchise by two years. He voiced Pac-Man’s pet cat in the 1982 animated series based on Pac-Man, the first television show ever adapted from a video game.
A year later, he voiced Mario in Saturday Supercade, an anthology series with segments based on Frogger, Pitfall, and Donkey Kong. That made him the first actor to voice Mario in English. Neither role earned the recognition his later work did. Both put him inside video game history before most studios treated voice casting as a priority.
He later played the orcish warchief Orgrim Doomhammer in Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, a point-and-click adventure that Blizzard cancelled in 1998 before release. The game has since surfaced online in a playable form, giving fans a rare chance to hear a performance that had nearly disappeared entirely. It is one of the few glimpses of Cullen working outside the Transformers and Predator properties that made him famous.
Roles beyond Optimus Prime
Outside games, Cullen voiced Venger in Dungeons & Dragons. He also played Eeyore in various Winnie the Pooh productions and Monterey Jack in Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. He provided the guttural vocalizations for the creature in the original Predator films, too. That performance became almost as recognizable as his work on Transformers, despite containing no dialogue at all.
Cullen’s range meant a generation of players encountered his voice long before they knew his name. It started with Saturday morning cartoons tied to arcade hits. It ended with the modern Transformers game trilogy developed by High Moon Studios, decades later. Few actors carried a single character across as many mediums, or held onto the role for as long, as Cullen did with Optimus Prime.
His death closes out a run that started with the original 1984 Transformers cartoon. It carried, almost without interruption, into this decade’s Transformers games and films. It also arrives in the same week as the deaths of Dolly Parton and Yayoi Kusama. Tim Curry, who voiced the villain in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, died in the same stretch.
Between the Transformers series and the Predator films, Cullen spent close to half a century voicing two of pop culture’s most recognizable non-human characters. One of them relied almost entirely on wordless sound.