One voice built the most trusted robot in film, and the saddest donkey in children's books. Nine chapters explain how a Montreal radio kid became both.
Cullen died at his Los Angeles home at 85, his agent confirmed. His family said he passed peacefully, surrounded by them. No cause of death has been released.
Peter Claver Cullen was born on July 28, 1941. The baritone came first and the acting followed: he built his early career in Canadian radio, not on camera.
He played Commander Bi Bi Latuque on Montreal's The Buddies in 1969, then announced The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and appeared on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.
He supplied creature vocals for the 1976 King Kong, and in 1987 the clicks and growls of the Predator. He went uncredited for the alien hunter he helped invent.
For the 1984 Transformers audition he thought of Larry, his brother, a Marine home from Vietnam. Larry's advice: be a hero, and strong enough to be gentle.
The Transformers: The Movie killed Optimus Prime on screen and children wept in cinemas. The backlash was loud enough that the character was written back to life.
From the late 1980s to 2002 the same throat gave Disney its gloomiest donkey, in Winnie the Pooh films and series. He returned to Eeyore for Disney Junior in 2017.
He voiced the evil KARR in Knight Rider and Monterey Jack in Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, then narrated Cartoon Network's Toonami block from 1999 to 2008.
He came back as Optimus Prime for Michael Bay's 2007 live-action film and stayed. In 2014 he set his handprints in cement outside the Chinese Theatre.
He voiced Prime again in 2018's Bumblebee and kept meeting fans at conventions into his eighties. Few actors hold one role that long, or are loved that much for it.