Shane Rimmer was a Canadian actor who played different characters across multiple Bond films. His first role in the series was as an Tom, an American launch controller in You Only Live Twice. He later provided the voice of Hamilton (played onscreen by Robert Dix) in Live and Let Die.
His last and longest role in the franchise was in the 1977 entry The Spy Who Loved Me, where Rimmer played CMDR Carter of the USS Wayne. Carter was a fan favorite, but the role for which he was best known was undoubtedly his voicework for the 1965 cult TV series Thunderbirds and, later, its first two films, Thunderbirds are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968). Rimmer's main character in the series, Scott Tracy, was at least party based on a mixture of Sean Connery's tenure as James Bond and Shane's. These productions were overseen by Gerry Anderson, who in the 1970s wrote an early screen treatment for what became the Moonraker film, and featured special effects by Derek Meddings. Rimmer also wrote scripts for Anderson productions and was the lead voice actor for one of Anderson's later stop-motion series, Dick Spanner, P.I. (1986).
His short exchange with Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars Epsiode IV: A New Hope (released in 1977, the same year as The Spy Who Loved Me, with Rimmer in a small role as a technician who assists Luke before the final battle) also marked the actor as a fan favorite.
Rimmer's career began in 1957 and lasted until his death in 2019. Other media he appeared in included Superman (1978), Gandhi (1982), The Bourne Identity (1988), A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995), Batman Begins (2005) and Dark Shadows (2012).
Shane Rimmer passed away in 2019 at the age of 89. His last completed role was in the Cartoon Network series The Amazing World of Gumball. He is also listed as having completed voice work for the unreleased puppet-animation film Firestorm, set in the Thunderbirds universe and directed by Steven Begg, the visual effects supervisor for all the Craig-era Bond films.
_-_Profile.jpg "Hamilton (Robert Dix) - Profile.jpg (238 KB)")
_-_Profile.png "Tom (Shane Rimmer) - Profile.png (498 KB)")
