My brother was a captain in the Marine Corps and a very big hero in my life.
— Peter Cullen
The phenomenon of 'Transformers' itself is mind-shaking, you know?
Everybody's going to approach a character differently, depending upon what they bring to it on their own intellectual level or their feelings from their heart and soul.
I kind of modeled Optimus Prime's voice out of many people I had known over the years, my family especially.
I always try to make a voice to go with the characteristics - if the guy's a hothead or he's cool, whatever.
I enjoy dramatic narration, of course, because I'm an actor and I started as an actor. But I love things that are a challenge, and I look forward to more work with that in the future. So there's always a sun coming up the following day for me.
As a young actor, I would be invited to the CBC radio drama department to do voices for different characters, and I found that I could do quite a few of them. I wasn't a visual presence, and I found it easier to construct a voice from the written page.
I'm always involved with the Aerospace Program and NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center. And if kids feel so inclined, they can log onto NASA and the Optimus Prime Spinoff Award, which we present every year to some of the brilliant young minds that are taking up into the academics of space, science, technology, math.
I immerse myself right into my character whether or not I'm relating to people live as an actor on stage or whatever.
