Alan Oppenheimer

Alan Oppenheimer
Born	April 23, 1930 (1930-04-23) (age 79) New York City, New York

Alan Oppenheimer (born April 23, 1930) is an American character actor and voice actor. He has performed numerous roles on live-action television since the 1960s, and had an active career doing voice work in cartoons since the 1970s.

Biography

As a character actor

As a character actor, Oppenheimer has had diverse roles in popular American television programming, from playing a Nazi in Hogan's Heroes, to playing an Israeli secret agent as well as a double-agent KAOS scientist on Get Smart, to being the second actor to play Dr. Rudy Wells in The Six Million Dollar Man (Martin Balsam played the role in the pilot movie; Oppenheimer took it over starting with the second film, "Wine, Women and War"). He also had a recurring role on the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere, as Helen Rosenthal's husband Ira.

He has appeared in three of the more recent Star Trek series, always playing a different character. He appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Rightful Heir" as a Klingon cleric, Koroth, a primary instigator of the cloning of Kahless, on Deep Space Nine as a Starfleet Captain Declan Keogh in command of the USS Odyssey, and as an alien ambassador in Voyager.

Alan Oppenheimer appeared as film director Cecil B. DeMille in the 1994 Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Blvd.^[1]

Voice roles

He is recognised as the voice of many characters, often for Filmation in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Mighty Mouse, Ming the Merciless on Flash Gordon, the Overlord on BlackStar, and Skeletor, Man-At-Arms and Mer-Man from Filmation's 1980s cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Other notable voice roles include Thundarr the Barbarian, Vanity on The Smurfs and Falkor and Gmork from 1984's The NeverEnding Story. In the early 90s Oppenheimer was the voice of Merlin in The Legend of Prince Valiant. He also performed various supporting roles in various incarnations of Scooby-Doo. He took over the voice of Roger Smith's butler Norman Burg in the second season of The Big O. Oppenheimer also worked on Transformers, most notably as two contrasting characters, the pacifist Beachcomber and the bellicose Warpath. He was the voice of Alistair Crane on the soap opera Passions up until 2004 (when the character was made fully visible, played by David Bailey). Oppenheimer recently provided the voice of the Scientist for the 2009 film 9.

Oppenheimer's repertoire also includes video games, voicing Prometheus in God of War II and Jandor the Airship Captain in Nox. In Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, he spoke the part of Harold, an ancient mutated survivor of nuclear holocaust who has appeared in four of the Fallout series games. Oppenheimer also voiced the parts of a non-player character Soldier and the Wasteland Trader, and the NPC 'enemies' Cult Ghoul Thug and Kamikaze in Fallout: BoS. Also, in the 1990-1992 compilation of Ys Book I and II, Oppenheimer voiced the roles of the Narrator, and the game's lead antagonist, Darm.^[2]

Personal life

Oppenheimer was born in New York City, New York, the son of Irene (née Rothschild) and Louis E. Oppenheimer, who was a stockbroker.^[3] He was married to costume designer Marianna Elliott and professional tennis player Marilyn Greenwood, and has three children. He is third cousin to Robert Oppenheimer.

References

External links

• Alan Oppenheimer at the Internet Movie Database
• Alan Oppenheimer at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)