René Auberjonois 1940-2019
René Murat Auberjonois (June 1, 1940 – December 8, 2019) was an American actor and singer.
Born in New York, New York, his family moved to Paris, France, after World War II, where at an early age he decided to become an actor. After a few years in France, the family moved back to the United States and joined an artists' colony in Rockland County, New York, whose residents included Burgess Meredith, John Houseman, and Helen Hayes. The Auberjonois family also lived in London, United Kingdom, where Auberjonois completed high school while studying theatre. To complete his education, he attended and graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1962. After college, Auberjonois worked with several different theatre companies, beginning at the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and then he traveled between Los Angeles, California, and New York, working in numerous theatre productions.In 1968, Auberjonois landed a role on Broadway, and appeared in three plays simultaneously: as Fool to Lee J. Cobb's King Lear, as Ned in A Cry of Players (opposite Frank Langella), and as Marco in Fire! In 1969, he earned a Tony Award for his performance as Sebastian Baye alongside Katharine Hepburn in Coco. In films, Auberjonois portrayed Father Mulcahy in MASH (1970), the expedition scientist Roy Bagley in King Kong (1976), and Chef Louis in The Little Mermaid (1989), in which he sang "Les Poissons". In the American animated musical comedy film Cats Don't Dance (1997), Auberjonois lent his voice as Flanagan, the human film director of "Li'l Ark Angel". In various long-running television series, Auberjonois portrayed a number of characters, including: Clayton Endicott III on Benson (for which he was nominated an Emmy Award), Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal. He also branched out into voice acting for video games, having appeared in a number of popular video games. He portrayed the Greek mythological figure Talos in the first God of War (2005) game, the enigmatic Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Karl Schafer in the Uncharted video game series, and Odo in Star Trek Online. He had been married to his wife Judith since 1963. They had two children, Tessa and Remy, and three grandchildren.
Auberjonois passed away from metastatic lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, California on December 8, 2019 at the age of 79.