Tony Jay

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

Jay was born in England in 1933. He later moved to the United States, and became a naturalised citizen.

Jay has appeared on-screen in several movies and on television, including Love and Death, Twins, and Eerie, Indiana. He also has developed a distinguished career in the theatre, in plays such as Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, and The Merchant of Venice. Jay's other non-animation roles included the villainous and scarred Paracelsus on the 1980's CBS series Beauty and the Beast and later as the character of Minister Campio on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the prudish and poorly chosen betrothed of Lwaxana Troi . He was also well known for his role as the voice of the virus Megabyte in the award winning 3-D animated show ReBoot

Jay was an impassioned 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, however a years-earlier version 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.

He is also well-known and well-loved among Legacy of Kain fans for his voicing of the original Mortanius and of the Elder God, alongside several other minor characters.

Jay also performs the voice as the Ghost Host for the load spiel at the Haunted Mansion in the Magic Kingdom park of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

Tony Jay died in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on August 13, 2006, aged 73. He had been in critical condition since April 2006, after failing to recover from endoscopic surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor in his lungs.

1 Voiceover roles
2 External links

[edit] Voiceover roles

Notable characters Tony Jay has voiced include:

[edit] Television

Shere Khan the tiger from The Jungle Book 2 and Tale Spin series (following the death of George Sanders)
Monsieur D'arque in Beauty and the Beast
The voice of God in Time Bandits
Alf Mason in Peter Pan & The Pirates
Lickboot the lawyer in Tom and Jerry: The Movie
Ceronomus the wizard for the attraction Caesar's Magical Empire
Chairface Chippendale in The Tick
Megabyte in ReBoot
Galactus and Terrax in The Fantastic Four
Anubis in Gargoyles
Pyron in the US Darkstalkers cartoon
Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Jay also does his character's singing)
Jarlsberg in Bruno the Kid
The Wraith in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series
Baron Mordo in Spider-Man: The Animated Series
Lord Dregg, the main villain of the final two seasons of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Virgil the Lemurian in Mighty Max
Sul-Van in Superman: The Animated Series
Dr. Lipshitz in Rugrats.
The Chief in the 1993 revival of Secret Squirrel
Leader of the Rangers in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter

[edit] Video Games

Lieutenant in Fallout (1997 computer game)
Mithras in Sacrifice (2000 computer game)
The Transcendent One in Planescape: Torment (1999 computer game)
The Director in Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Chancellor Florian Gustov Niemann in Freelancer
The Racial Background Introduction Narrator in World of Warcraft
Kresselack in Icewind Dale (2000 computer game)
The Elder God and Zephon in the Legacy of Kain series
Mortanius the Necromancer in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (the first installment)
Magneto in X-Men Legends