Morgan Lofting, ‘G.I. Joe’ & ‘Spider-Man’ Voice Actor, Dies at 84

Morgan Lofting, best known for voicing the villainous Baroness in animated G.I. Joe movies and TV shows, has died at age 84.

Lofting’s agents said she died unexpectedly on Wednesday, November 27, at her home in Burbank, California, per The Hollywood Reporter. “As one of the 10 founding actors at our agency, she meant the world to us and our company,” the agents, CelebWorx’s Nery Lemus and Christopher Arsaga, added.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 2, 1940, Lofting marked her first voice acting role playing Princess Invidia on Star Blazers, a syndicated American adaptation of a Japanese anime series, from 1979 to 1984. And from 1981 to 1982, she voiced Aunt May and Black Cat in a syndicated, animated Spider-Man series.

Lofting made her debut as The Baroness, Cobra’s cunning intelligence officer, in the 1983 miniseries G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero – The M.A.S.S. Device , coming up with a European accent for the part.

“You’re handed generally a sketch — like a black-and-white sketch of what [the character is] gonna look like, which is extremely helpful — and there was probably a character background, and they must have said something about an accent,” Lofting told Creative Continuity in 2016. “But you read this, and you start to get ideas, and then you go somewhere out in the field somewhere, and you work on your voice because you don’t want other actors to hear what you’re intending to do. And somehow I came up with this mid-European sound. I have no idea where this came from. There is no country where anybody speaks like this.”

In that interview, Lofting said her “Cobra!” shout may have clinched her casting. “I just let loose with the ‘Cobra!’” she said. “[Fellow G.I. Joe voice actor] Mike Bell used to say that there was blood on the control room window when I finished the ‘Cobra!’”

Lofting reprised the part in the 1984 miniseries G.I. Joe: The Revenge of Cobra, the 1985 series G.I. Joe, 1986’s TV movie G.I. Joe: Arise, Serpentor, Arise!, 1987’s direct-to-video G.I. Joe: The Movie, the 1989 miniseries G.I. Joe: Operation Dragonfire, and another G.I. Joe series from 1990 to 1991.

Meanwhile, Lofting took live-action parts in an episode of Hotel and a four-episode arc on Knots Landing, playing Mrs. Whitehead on the latter.

After resuming to college in 1989 to finish her bachelor’s degree and then getting a master’s degree in history from Cal State History, Lofting became a librarian and started “bartending with books.”

Lofting is survived by her brother, Tim, his wife, Lynn, and their son, Brian; her son, Justin, and his wife, Stacie; and her grandchildren, Zac and Ellie, THR reports.