Born in Montreal in 1941, Cullen graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1963. He worked as an announcer for Montreal radio. He began working in television in Canada and picked up interest from American television. He made a breakthrough by appearing regularly on The Sonny & Cher Show from 1971 to 1974.
In the early 1980s Cullen's agent spotted the emerging genre of animated television with toy tie-in lines, and put Cullen forwards for multiple roles. Cullen impressed the team at Sunbow Television responsible for the animated tie-in to Hasbro's Transformers line (initially an extensive import and rebranding of Takara's Diaclone and Microchange toy lines from Japan) and was cast in the core role of Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots, as well as his lieutenant, Ironhide, in 1984. When trying to work out a voice for Prime, Cullen was inspired by his older brother Larry, who had volunteered to fight in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam. Larry had advised his younger brother to not "act" like a hero, but instead "be" a hero, with wisdom and compassion instead of just acting tough.
Cullen rapidly became iconic in the role. Famously, young children were left traumatised by Prime's death in Transformers: The Movie (1986), something that left Cullen shocked. Cullen returned to voice the character during his resurrection in the third season of the TV show.
The success of the role saw Cullen become in-demand for other voice roles. He played multiple roles in the US dubs of Voltron and Saber Rider, and multiple roles in the GI Joe animated series. He voiced the villainous computer KAAR, nemesis of KITT, in Knight Rider, and provided the voice-over sounds for the titular enemy in the film Predator (1987). He voiced one of the titular creatures in Gremlins (1984). Arguably his two most iconic voice-over roles after Prime came with playing the evil Venger in the Dungeons & Dragons animated series (1983-85) and Eyore in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988-91). Amongst Cullen's numerous achievements was providing the first English-language voice for Mario in 1983.
Cullen reprised his role as Optimus Prime in the 2007 live-action film Transformers, proceeding to play the role in sequels Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Dark of the Moon (2011), Age of Extinction (2014), The Last Knight (2017), Bumblebee (2018) and Rise of the Beasts (2023). He also played Optimus Prime in the animated series Transformers: Prime (2010-13), Rescue Bots (2011-16), Robots in Disguise (2015-17) and Titans Return (2017-18). He also played the role in numerous video games and advertisements, and had a key appearance as himself in The Toys That Made Us (2018), in the episode about the Transformers franchise.
Cullen began appearing at Transformers conventions in the 1990s and was struck by how his performance had inspired young people. He struck up a strong friendship with fellow voice actor Frank Welker, who played Prime's nemesis Megatron in Transformers. In the 2020s both Cullen and Welker were cast in the animated series Invincible, playing on their iconic characters' rivalry. Peter Cullen was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Children's Emmy Award in 2023 for his huge contribution to iconic voice roles across forty years.
Peter Cullen was a huge inspiration and reassuring voice for several entire generations of children. He will be extremely missed.
