Keir Dullea
Actor
b. 1936 · USA
Dullea trained at San Francisco State College and the Neighborhood Playhouse before building a modest stage and film career in the early 1960s, appearing in several dramas before Kubrick cast him in his most enduring role.
He played astronaut Dave Bowman with a deliberate emotional flatness Kubrick demanded — so that HAL 9000, the ship's computer, would come across as the most human character in the film. Kubrick reportedly directed him to strip nearly all visible emotion from his performance.
The role remains by far the most famous of his career, a demanding and unusual acting assignment that required enormous restraint over the film's long and famously arduous shooting schedule.
Advertisement
