Jered Barclay, ‘Transformers’ and ‘Smurfs’ Actor, Dead at 91

Actor Jered Barclay passed away last month at the age of 91, according to a report by Deadline. Barclay had a long and prolific career from the stage to the screen and then in the voice-over booth. Many fans are celebrating his life in the wake of this tragic news.

Barclay reportedly died on Saturday, July 23 due to complications with MDS Leukemia. He was in North Hollywood at the time, but no other details on his passing are available. Barclay is best remembered today for his voice acting on cartoons including The Smurfs and The Transformers. However, his resume goes back much further than that and spans just about every conceivable medium and format available.

Barclay was born in 1930 and got his first job in the entertainment business at the age of 3 years old. He started out in vaudeville like so many others of that era, and notably shared the stage with legends like Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Sammy Davis Jr. He even traveled with a prominent circus for a time, and also began making appearances on the radio from the age of 6.

Barclay found his way into the movies in the 1950s with a few prominent roles from that era. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on some of his TV projects and appeared in the iconic sci-fi film War of the Satellites. In the 1960s, Barclay continued following the momentum into the TV industry, appearing in several of that decade’s prominent western serials.

Barclay continued to juggle the stage and screen in the decades that followed, while the 1980s finally brought him back into the recording booth. He recorded voice-over performances for animated series including Trollkins, The Little Rascals, Richie Rich, Pole Position and Foofur. He contributed several different voices to The Smurfs, and then appeared in the original Transformers cartoon from 1984 to 1987.

Barclay voiced three characters in that time, including the mysterious Autobot pacifist Cerebros and the Decepticon Terrorcon Sinnertwin. He also voiced the human Gregory Swofford in a heartbreaking episode about the collateral damage the Transformers caused in their endless wars.

Barclay’s most recent on-screen credits came in 1991. According to IMDb, he stopped performing after that. Barclay reportedly found a second career as an international photojournalist. Fans everywhere are mourning the actor this week.