Studio Note #45: Be Strong Enough to Be Gentle.
Peter Cullen’s work as Optimus Prime embodied what makes a true hero.
There are voices you recognize before you recognize the person behind them.
Peter Cullen had several of them.
Eeyore, K.A.R.R. from Knight Rider (basically K.I.T.T.’s evil older brother), King Kong, and even the clicking, guttural sounds of the Predator.
But there was one voice that belonged entirely to him.
Optimus Prime.
Cullen died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles at 85. His career stretched across six decades and more than 200 credits, but for millions of people, particularly those of us who grew up in the 1980s, a few words in that impossibly deep baritone were enough to immediately transport us back to the floor in front of a television surrounded by plastic transforming robots.
The story of how he found that voice makes it even better.
In 1984, Cullen was heading to an audition for a new cartoon called Transformers. He didn't know much about the part. He knew the character was a hero.
And a truck.
Before leaving, he told his older brother Larry about the audition. Larry had served as a Marine officer in Vietnam and was, by Cullen's account, one of the great heroes of his own life.
Larry told him not to play the character like some stereotypical Hollywood tough guy.
A real hero didn't need to yell. He could be compassionate. Understanding. Calm. He should be strong enough to be gentle.
Cullen went into the audition and essentially did an impression of his brother.
Optimus Prime was born.
That's an extraordinary creative decision when you think about what he was actually being asked to do.
This was a cartoon created to sell transforming toys. Optimus Prime was a red and blue semi-truck from another planet fighting an evil robot that turned into a gun.
This could have been ridiculous.
Instead, Cullen’s approach was dignified and befitting of the hero’s mantle.
There was no wink at the audience. No attempt to make the premise less absurd. He treated the character seriously and, because he did, kids did too.
Optimus didn't sound powerful because he was constantly reminding everyone that he was powerful. He was measured. Certain. Protective. He sounded like someone who knew exactly what needed to be done and didn't particularly care whether anyone noticed that he was the one doing it.
For a generation of kids, that became part of our understanding of what a leader sounded like.
That voice proved remarkably durable.
The original Transformers cartoon only ran for a few years, but the character never really went away. When Hollywood turned Transformers into a massive live-action franchise more than two decades later, there were new actors, new designs, new visual effects and an entirely different scale.
But Optimus Prime still sounded like Peter Cullen.
He returned to the role in 2007 and continued voicing Prime through Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in 2023.
Nearly forty years after an actor walked into a room and decided that an alien robot truck should sound like his older brother, the decision still worked.
That's rare.
Cullen had incredible range. The fact that the same man could make Eeyore sound heartbreakingly lovable and a seven-million-year-old alien commander sound capable of saving the universe should probably be studied somewhere.
He could also disappear completely. Millions of people heard his work without ever knowing his name.
But he couldn't disappear inside Optimus Prime.
Eventually the two became inseparable.
Maybe that's what happens when a performance starts somewhere more meaningful than technique.
Every time Cullen performed Optimus, he said he could hear Larry.
His brother died in 2011, but the voice remained.
So did the lesson behind it.
Cullen's family asked that people honor him by serving their communities and leading others with compassion, integrity and loyalty.
And they repeated the words Larry Cullen gave his younger brother before an audition for a cartoon about robots more than forty years ago:
Be strong enough to be gentle.
That’s an incredible legacy and something we could certainly use more of.