Michael Brandon (born on 20 April 1945 in Brooklyn, New York, USA, as Michael Feldman) is an American actor. He served as the narrator for the US narration of the seventh to sixteenth series of Thomas & Friends. He also narrated some of the Thomas DVD menus of Hooray for Thomas and Other Adventures, Thomas' Sodor Celebration, Tales from the Tracks, and Come Ride the Rails in 2006, and he re-narrated six episodes from the sixth series and all episodes from the seventh series, as Michael Angelis replaced Alec Baldwin briefly.
He currently holds the record as the longest-running narrator for the US.
Brandon has appeared in other television shows and films such as Dempsey and Makepeace, The Nanny, Dinotopia, The Division, Ally McBeal, The Catherine Tate Show, Murder She Wrote, New Tricks, Try This One for Size and Doctor Who.
He was first married to Lindsay Wagner. He later married Dempsey and Makepeace co-star Glynis Barber, best known for her role in EastEnders.
Voices
US
- Diesel (2010 - 2012)
- Mr. Bubbles (2010 - 2011)
Filmography
Film
TV
Video Games
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Trivia
- Brandon is the third narrator who has narrated episodes in series prior to the one in which he begins as narrator in the US, the first being George Carlin and the second being Håkan Mohede.
- According to Michael Brandon, he would go into the studio at around 9 am and work until 4 pm during the series' tenure using model animation.
- Since voice actors for individual characters were introduced, Brandon is the only narrator to also voice at least one character in his respective region's script at the same time as narrating the script.
- When the first several episodes of the seventeenth series were aired on PBS, Brandon was mistakenly credited as the narrator instead of Mark Moraghan.
- Because Brandon joined after Shining Time Station ended, he was the first US narrator not to play Mr. Conductor.
- Michael Brandon is credited alongside Alec Baldwin in the The Story of Thomas and the Jet Engine sampler DVD, even though the disc only had the episode Thomas and the Jet Engine, which was narrated by Alec Baldwin. This was due to the episode being sourced from the US DVD.
- He, alongside Óscar Gómez, Ron Druyan, Aku Laitinen, Dan Schatzberg and Blanche Ravalec have been the only narrators in the CGI series to both narrate and voice characters.
- According to a YouTube interview with YouTube channel, Jake's Happy Nostalgia Show!, when Michael Brandon was asked who his favourite characters are, he said Diesel, Cranky, Toby, and Gordon are his favourites. As for his favourite episode, he was not very sure which one to pick, especially the ones he narrated during his tenure from the show.
- Coincidentally, he, Christopher Awdry and Michael White have Toby as their favourite character.
- He watched the Thomas & Friends television series with his son Alex in Los Angeles for many years before moving back to London and became narrator for the US dub of the show.[1]
- Brandon was born the same year the first book of The Railway Series was published, in 1945.
- When Rupert Degas was 14 in 1984, he interviewed Michael Brandon for his school magazine. Brandon was filming Dempsey and Makepeace in a block of flats on the same floor where Degas lived. Brandon inspired Degas to become an actor. Years later when he was on Thomas & Friends, he asked Brandon if he remembered him, but he did not.[2]
