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Oscar Earl Nitz Boen (August 8, 1941 - January 5, 2023) was an American actor and voice actor best known for portraying the recurring criminal psychiatrist Dr. Peter Silberman across all three original Terminator films, and for an extraordinarily prolific voice-over career spanning animation, video games, and radio.1 In the Ghostbusters universe he contributed a guest voice performance to Extreme Ghostbusters.
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Boen was born on August 8, 1941, in New York City.1 Little is documented about his early education or formal training, but he built a steady stage and television career throughout the 1970s before transitioning to a mix of screen and voice work that would define his later career.
Boen made his television debut in 1977 on The Streets of San Francisco and his film debut the same year in Mr. Billion.1 Through the late 1970s and 1980s he accumulated a long string of guest appearances on American network television, including Hawaii Five-O, The Jeffersons, Who's the Boss?, The Golden Girls, Mama's Family (recurring as Reverend Lloyd Meechum), and Seinfeld.1
His most prominent on-screen role came with the original Terminator franchise. Boen played Dr. Peter Silberman, a skeptical criminal psychiatrist who repeatedly encounters Sarah Connor and dismisses her accounts of time-traveling machines, in The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).1 He was the only actor besides Arnold Schwarzenegger to appear in each of the first three films in that series.1 Other notable screen credits include 9 to 5 (1980), The Man with Two Brains (1983), Alien Nation (1988), Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000).1
Boen retired from on-screen acting in 2003 but continued voice work until 2017, and this second chapter of his career proved to be particularly rich.1 He originated the role of the villainous pirate ghost LeChuck in LucasArts' Monkey Island adventure game series, a part he returned to across multiple sequels and the 2009 special edition release.1 In World of Warcraft and its expansions he voiced the narrator and the tragic King Terenas Menethil II, a performance widely remembered by players of that game.1 Additional video game credits include Sergei Gurlukovich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) and Colossus in X-Men: Legends (2004); he received NAVGTR Award nominations for his voice performance in Psychonauts (2005) and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009).1
In animation he was Police Chief Kanifky in Disney's Bonkers, Horace Bleakman in Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Senor Senior Sr. in Disney Channel's Kim Possible.1 He voiced Taurus in G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987) and Nagilum in Star Trek: The Next Generation.1 For radio drama he played the memorable villain Dr. Regis Blackgaard (and twin brother Edwin Blackgaard) across 61 episodes of the Christian radio serial Adventures in Odyssey from 1987 to 2015.1 He also served as the voice of the Disneyland Railroad announcer from 2002 to 2016 and the Walt Disney World Railroad announcer from 2002 to 2010, making him a presence recognized by millions of theme-park visitors who never knew his name.1
Boen contributed a guest voice performance to Extreme Ghostbusters, the 1997 animated continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise. He appeared in the episode Casting the Runes,2 one of several prominent character actors recruited for guest roles in that series.
Boen married actress Carole Kean in 1970; the couple had one daughter together.1 Kean died on April 23, 2001, from ovarian cancer at age 58.1 Boen later married Cathy in 2008 and became stepfather to her daughter Ruby.1 He had two grandchildren.
Boen was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer in the autumn of 2022.3 He died quietly in his sleep on January 5, 2023, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the age of 81.3 His death was reported by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter on January 6, 2023.34
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
"Earl Boen," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Boen. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18
IMDb, "Extreme Ghostbusters: Casting the Runes -- Full Cast and Crew," accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0574516/fullcredits/. ↩
Variety, "Earl Boen Dies: 'The Terminator' Actor was 81" (January 6, 2023), https://variety.com/2023/film/news/earl-boen-the-terminator-actor-dies-1235480866/. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
The Hollywood Reporter, "Earl Boen, Actor in the 'Terminator' Films, Dies at 81" (January 6, 2023), https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/earl-boen-dead-actor-terminator-franchise-1235292569/. ↩
