The late actor discovered his vocal talents on a farm
The pop culture community is mourning the loss of Peter Cullen.
The voice actor best known for portraying Optimus Prime in multiple Transformers projects and the donkey Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, died Aug. 26 in Los Angeles, Calif.
His first performances occurred on a family farm.
Cullen was born in Montreal, Que., and his family spent time on his aunt’s farm in upstate New York.
It was there he found he had vocal talents.
He mimicked the dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, and other animals on the farm.
But it was when he impersonated the cows that something struck.
“I had a full dairy barn where I would collect milk pails with my brother, Larry (who Cullen said was the source material for Optimus Prime’s voice and personality). I found one day that I made a loud noise and all the cows looked up to me,” he told NPR in June 2014. “So I did something like, "And now that I have your attention!" And they all looked up. And I walked down the center of that aisle with these cows looking at me and I said, "This is fantastic." I must have been 8 years old ... and I was the king of the cows.”
Those summers on the farm took him to the National Theatre School of Canada and eventually to the U.S. where he’d voice Optimus Prime.
For truck afficionados, Prime and Cullen’s voice appeared as three different trucks during his career.
The character was a Freightliner FL86 in the 1980s, a Peterbilt 379 at the beginning of the 2010s, and is currently a Western Star 5700 Custom.
While Cullen got his start on a farm, one Transformers character is a piece of farm equipment.
Thunderhoof is a Decepticon crime boss whose vehicle form is a blue tractor.