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Tony Jay

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Tony Jay
Occupation(s)Actor, voice actor

Tony Jay (February 2, 1933 - August 13, 2006) was an English actor and voice actor. A former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was known for his voice work in animation, film and computer games. Jay's distinctive baritone voice often landed him villainous roles.

Biography

Career

Jay appeared on-screen in several movies and on television, including Love and Death, Twins, Night Court and Eerie, Indiana. He also developed a career in the theatre, in plays such as The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, and The Merchant of Venice. Jay's other non-animation roles included Paracelsus on the 1987 CBS series Beauty and the Beast; Minister Campio on Star Trek: The Next Generation; and Lex Luthor's villainous aide-de-camp Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. He was also well known for his role as the voice of the virus Megabyte in the award-winning 3-D animated series ReBoot, and for his voice work as Judge Claude Frollo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also voiced Monsieur D'Arque, the amoral asylum superintendent, (TV in Disney's Beauty and the Beast and the Slave of the Magic Mirror (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) in the Disneyland/Walt Disney World nighttime light and fireworks show Fantasmic! He is also well-known among Legacy of Kain fans for his voicing of the original Mortanius and of the Elder God, alongside several other minor characters.

Jay was a devotee of classic Broadway, and has made several recordings and performances of old-time Broadway lyrics, in spoken-word form. A CD of these readings, Speaking of Broadway, was released in 2005; a version recorded years earlier of this same collection was titled Poets on Broadway, the same as his website. It features Jay reciting lyrics written by the likes of Noel Coward, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein and was composed entirely by him, according to the CD liner notes.

Personal life

Jay was born in London, England in 1933. He attended Pinner County Grammar School. He moved to South Africa in 1966 and was involved with many radio productions on the SABC Commercial Radio Service, Springbok Radio, until 1980. He later moved to the United States, and became a naturalized citizen. Jay was Jewish.[1]

He died in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on August 13, 2006, at the age of 73. He had been in critical condition since April 2006, after failing to recover from a surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor from his lung. His interment was located at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Notable voice roles

Notable characters Tony Jay has voiced include:

Film

Television

Video games

Narration

Notable projects for which Tony Jay has narrated include:

Voice-overs

Notable projects for which Tony Jay has narrated include:

  • LBC Radio (London), Tony Jay narrated voice-overs for the station's main jingle packages between 1974 and 1980.
  • SPRINGBOK RADIO (South Africa), Tony Jay acted, wrote & produced many radio series' in South Africa on the Commercial Radio Service, Springbok Radio.
  • Relapse New track from Eminem's upcoming album features Tony's Voice at the intro.

Programmes include: Taxi (Starred as one of the main lead's Red Kowalski, also wrote several episodes) The Sounds of Darkness (Starred as the main lead, Lee Masters)

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Tony Jay - Obituary". The Jewish Chronicle. 2006-12-22. p. 26. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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