Unless you’re a big fan of animation, you probably don’t know the name Tom Kane, but there’s a good chance you’ve heard his voice at some point in the past 25 years. Tom Kane is probably best known for voicing Jedi Master Yoda in Star Wars Clone Wars and several others Star Wars animated TV shows and video games. Unfortunately, the voice actor suffered a stroke in November, which left him virtually speechless.
Deadline drew our attention to a post on Tom Kane’s Facebook page yesterday from his daughter Sam. The post says:
“Hello everyone! This is Tom’s daughter, Sam. Our family wanted to share why my father disappeared. About two months ago, he had a stroke on the left side that caused him weakness on the right side and damage to the center of speech. in his brain. That means he cannot communicate verbally efficiently, nor read or spell. He is still competent and very much himself, but he can only say a few words now. As many of you may know about strokes, it is it is possible that he will regain these functions and we found him to be excellent in Kansas City for speech therapy, occupational and physical therapy, but for the time being, we have been warned by his neurologist that he cannot do narrations again.
My father is still in a good mood and his extreme stubbornness helped him to show improvements in speech. He totally agrees with me sharing this and he will see anything you post. “
This is truly tragic. Tom Kane is adored by the entire announcer community, and he has been working for 25 years. Only this year, he reprized his roles as Yoda and the narrator of the series of Star Wars Clone Wars, not to mention playing Jedi Master in The LEGO Star Wars holiday special and the next video game LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. He’s giving Yoda a voice in Star Wars projects since The Clone Wars Genndy Tartakovsky’s animated series in 2003. Kane even made the leap to Star Wars live, giving voice to Admiral Ackbar to Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
In addition to the endless work that Tom Kane has done Star Wars media, the actor also played Ultron in O Avengers: the most powerful heroes on Earth, Professor Utonium in both iterations of The Powerpuff Girls, Magneto in several X-Men animated series and video games, Darwin in The Wild Thornberrysand Woodhouse / Hans Hessler in more than a dozen episodes of Archer. Kane was also hired to impersonate the late Donald Pleasance in the narration as Dr. Samuel Loomis in Halloween H20. His work also extends to major video game franchises such as Call of Duty and Batman: Arkham, and he even took the lead in LEGO Indiana Jones 2008 video game. In addition, there were dozens of movie trailers with your narration as well.
Although doctors have warned that Tom Kane may never do the narration again, anything is possible. We know that Kane will be struggling to recover his communication, and where there is a will, there is a way. There have been many miraculous recoveries in cases like this, and we hope that Tom Kane will be lucky to be one of them. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope we haven’t heard the last of Kane’s many characters.
If you would like to know more about Tom Kane, here is a profile of his alma mater, the University of Kansas:
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