1. Donald LeRoy LaFontaine was an American voice actor who recorded more than 5,000 film trailers and hundreds of thousands of television advertisements, network promotions, and video game trailers over four decades.
13 Facts About Don LaFontaine
1. 2.
Don LaFontaine continued to work as a recording engineer after discharge and began working at the National Recording Studios in New York City, where, in 1962, he had the opportunity to work with producer Floyd Peterson on radio spots for Dr Strangelove.
3.
Don LaFontaine decided to get back into trailer work and left Paramount, moving to Los Angeles in 1981.
4.
Don LaFontaine was contacted by an agent who wanted to promote him for voiceover work, and from then on worked in voiceovers.
5.
Don LaFontaine often had jobs at several different studios each day.
6.
Don LaFontaine lent his distinctive voice to thousands of movie trailers during his career, spanning every genre from every major film studio, including The Cannon Group, for which he voiced one of their logos.
7.
Don LaFontaine stated in 2007 that his favorite work in a movie trailer was for the biographical film The Elephant Man, though according to a response to the question on his website, he had several trailers which stood out in his mind, and he didn't like to choose one.
8.
Don LaFontaine did not win the game and offered to record the listener's answering machine message himself.
9.
Don LaFontaine once claimed that he enjoyed recording messages like these because it allowed him to be creative in writing unique messages and said that he would do so for anyone who contacted him if he had the time.
10.
Don LaFontaine was featured as the celebrity in one of these ads which began airing in August 2006.
11.
Don LaFontaine's family made a public appeal for prayers on Mediabistro.
12.
On September 1,2008, six days after his 68th birthday and ten days after his hospitalization, Don LaFontaine died following complications from a pneumothorax.
13.
Don LaFontaine was referenced, with opening clips of his work and several subsequent verbal homages, in the film In a World.