Don LaFontaine: The king of the trailers

In a world where movie trailers require voiceovers, Don LaFontaine was secretly a superstar. One man against all the odds, he – or rather, his voice – appeared in the promotional spots for more than 5,000 movies. You don't know his name, but you'll recognise his dulcet tones. He was the guy who could say, "In a world..." or "One man against all the odds" more deeply, richly and gravelly than anybody else.

On Monday, LaFontaine, also known as "Thunder Throat", "King of Trailers" and "The Voice of God", died aged 68 at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. At his creative peak, he is said to have recorded as many as 35 voiceovers – for film trailers, television commercials and video games – in a single day. He has been the announcer for the Oscars and the Screen Actors Guild awards and, based on the number of contracts signed, is the most employed actor in the guild's 75-year history.

In a world where trailers are often far better than the films they're promoting, a larynx like LaFontaine's could and did earn its owner millions of dollars – $30m (£17m) per year at one estimate. But not all the trailers he worked on were for turkeys. Among his acknowledged classics are spots for Fatal Attraction ("A look that led to an evening, a mistake he'd regret all his life"), The Terminator ("In the 21st century, a weapon would be invented like no other") and First Blood ("They knew he was innocent, and they didn't give a damn"). Even when promoting a stinker, he said: "You have to really believe what you're reading... Even the worst picture is someone's favourite film, and that someone is the fan I am always talking to."

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LaFontaine was born in Duluth, Minnesota in August 1940. He claims that his voice broke mid-sentence when he was 13, and that he was too embarrassed to speak in school the following day. Soon, he was in demand with his chums, who wanted to cut class and would ask him to call the school posing as their fathers.

He joined the military after graduation, and became a recording engineer to the US Army Band and Chorus, a career he continued to pursue after his discharge. As radio producers during the 1960s, he and his partner, Floyd Peterson, created radio trailers for films such as Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, coining phrases like "In a world..." and "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no way out..."

In 1965, a voiceover artiste failed to turn up to recording session that LaFontaine was producing, and he stepped in to fill the silence. It was his first trailer voiceover, for the MGM Western Gunfighters of Casa Grande. Soon he was the most familiar narrator in film. In the mid-Seventies, he started a trailer production house, his first job being to voice the promo for The Godfather: Part II.

LaFontaine spent three years as head of the trailer department at Paramount Pictures from 1978 to 1981, and said that his favourite work was the trailer for David Lynch's 1980 film The Elephant Man, starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. The trailer gave him an opportunity to emote with a straight face. His success was not only due to the natural gift of his vocal cords, but to the skill of his delivery. His voice could change gear like a finely tuned sports car, revving up to the top of a line, then pausing before the kicker. "At first, you will want to turn away from him," goes the voiceover for The Elephant Man. "Then you may find him a silent, unresisting target for your ridicule. But if you come to know him, you will begin to see beyond the perversion of his form and discover the beauty ... in the beast."

In a world where everyone has their own pale "In a world..." impression, LaFontaine was unafraid to parody himself, mocking his own voiceovers on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in the trailer for The Simpsons Movie, and in 5 Men and a Limo, a short film made to introduce the 1997 Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards, in which he appeared with four of his fellow voiceover artistes – John Leader, Nick Tate, Mark Elliot and Al Chalk – each satirising their own signature style.

In an interview last year, LaFontaine explained the thinking behind the "in a world..." catchphrase: "We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting [the audience] to," he said. "That's very easily done by saying 'In a world ... where violence rules', 'In a world ... where men are slaves and women are the conquerors.' You very rapidly set the scene."

In a world where all of us wanted to hear someone we could trust, one man spoke with the voice of authority. Don LaFontaine: The Voice ... of God.

In a world of movies...one man will voice them all

DodgeBall

"There are those who are born to be winners, and then...there are these guys."

The Godfather: Part II

"A drama of absolute power and the men who violate it... The motion picture masterpiece of the year."

Shrek

" 'Twas long ago and far away, in a land as different as night from day, where fairy-tale creatures of a magical sort, were banished by a prince who was... really short."

Minority Report

"The future can be seen. Murder can be stopped... The system can't be wrong."

Striking Distance

"They should've never put him in the water, if they didn't want him... to make waves."

Friday the 13th

"Friday the 13th. You may only see it once, but that... will be enough."

Batman Returns

"From the rooftops of Gotham, the purrfect enemy comes to life. And the only one who can save this city... is a creature of the night."

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

"Same make. Same model. New mission. Once he was programmed to destroy the future. Now his mission is to protect it."

Cast Away

"At the edge of the world, the end of a man's journey... will become the beginning of his life."

Ghost Busters

"Ghosts. They're real. They're mean... They're here."