Tony Jay

Tony Jay (February 2, 1933 – August 13, 2006) was an English-American 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. He is best known as the voice of Claude Frollo in Walt Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the virus Megabyte in the award-winning CG-I animated series ReBoot.

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, in Disney's Beauty and the Beast in the Disneyland/Walt Disney World nighttime light and fireworks show Fantasmic!. He also voiced the "Ghost Host" in Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion ride in the Magic Kingdom. 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 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 the same collection was titled Poets on Broadway, as is 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 and death
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. He was also Jewish.

In April 2006 he underwent surgery in Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles to remove a non-cancerous tumor from his lungs. He never recovered fully from the operation and was in critical condition throughout the following months, until his death at the hospital on August 13, 2006, at the age of 73. He is interred at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

Jay was survived by his wife Marta and his son Adam.

Notable voice roles
Notable characters Tony Jay voiced include:

Film

 * Voice of the Supreme Being in Time Bandits
 * Monsieur D'arque, the asylum owner, in Beauty and the Beast
 * Lickboot the lawyer in Tom and Jerry: The Movie
 * Judge Claude Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Jay also does his character's singing; see Hellfire) (in this role he was also nominated for an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Voice Acting)
 * Dr. Rosenthal in Recess: School's Out
 * Reginald in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2
 * Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2, who was the same character in TaleSpin.
 * Narrator in Treasure Planet
 * Cow in Thumbelina (Uncredited)
 * Toplofty in An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island
 * Narrator in "Nausicaa Valley Of The Wind"

Television

 * Announcer/Introduction of the Ancient Prophecies specials hosted by David McCallum on NBC in the mid 1990s.
 * Hungarian sculptor Laszlo in The Golden Girls
 * Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark
 * Dougie Milford in Twin Peaks
 * Edward F. Furrow in Garfield and Friends
 * Shere Khan in Tale Spin
 * Alf Mason in Peter Pan and the Pirates
 * Ceronomus the wizard for the attraction Caesar's Magical Empire
 * The Magical Wishing Starfish in The Little Mermaid
 * Chairface Chippendale in The Tick
 * Watson in Beethoven
 * Paracelsus in Beauty and the Beast
 * Megabyte in ReBoot
 * Galactus and Terrax in The Fantastic Four
 * Anubis in Gargoyles
 * Jarlsberg in Bruno the Kid
 * The Wraith in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series
 * Death in Darkwing Duck
 * 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. Lipschitz in Rugrats.
 * The Chief in the 1993 revival of Secret Squirrel
 * Spiderus in Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends (Note: This was Jay's final role before his death.)
 * Fire Demon King Gaav in Slayers
 * Narrated Skeleton Warriors cartoon series
 * Rex Smythe Higgens the 1st and a disembodied godlike voice in Hey Arnold!
 * Shere Khan, Magic Mirror, and Ostrich on House of Mouse
 * Mechestro in Xyber 9
 * Jaggo Donut in an episode of Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat
 * The talking yeti in Captain Planet

Video games

 * Lieutenant in Fallout
 * Super-mutant Leader in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
 * Mithras in Sacrifice (2000 computer game)
 * The Transcendent One in Planescape: Torment (1999 computer game)
 * The Sorcerer in Die by the Sword (1998 computer game)
 * The Director in Return to Castle Wolfenstein
 * Chancellor Florian Gustov Niemann in Freelancer
 * Kresselack in Icewind Dale (2000 computer game)
 * The Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series
 * Zephon in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
 * Mortanius the Necromancer in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain
 * Magneto in X-Men Legends
 * King Forge in Armed and Dangerous
 * The Narrator in The Bard's Tale (2004)
 * Xantam the Beholder in Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
 * Captain Saladin, ArchDruid, Gate, and Lamp Trader in King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
 * Kartom in the Aladdin series(episode book of kartom)
 * Innoruuk in Champions of Norrath
 * Leader of the Rangers in Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter

Narration
Notable projects for which Tony Jay narrated include:
 * Albert Fish, a 2006 film
 * Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
 * The Bard's Tale
 * The History Channel series Civil War Combat''
 * Dark Age of Camelot, a MMORPG set in Arthurian times.
 * Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
 * Hunter: The Reckoning
 * Inside a Death Camp: The Sobibor Story, a 2005 TV documentary about the Sobibór Nazi death camp
 * Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
 * Skeleton Warriors
 * Teen Titans (in the episode Transformation)
 * Treasure Planet
 * Twins
 * H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, a 2004 documentary on the notorious Herman Webster Mudgett
 * Blackstone audiobooks unabridged presentation of Horace Walpole's classic Gothic Romance "The Castle of Otranto"' and audio adaptation of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".
 * Ghost Host in the Haunted Mansion ride in Walt Disney World.

Voice-overs
Notable projects for which Tony Jay 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.

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)