Lorne Hyman Greene was a Canadian actor known for playing the main character, "Adama" in Battlestar Galactica 1978.
He first became well-known in Canada as a radio news broadcaster during World War II, garnering the nickname "The Voice of Doom" due to the fact his sonorous voice often accompanied war-related reports. He began acting for TV and film in the early 1950s and enjoyed his best-known role as patriarch Ben Cartwright in the long-running western series Bonanza, which ran from 1959 to 1972, and a character after which Adama - likewise the widowed father of boys - was somewhat patterned.
Greene also recorded several albums of songs, some performed in character as Ben Cartwright, including the Top 10 hit "Ringo". After both TOS versions of Battlestar Galactica ended, he returned to his roots in film narration as host of the popular nature program, Lorne Greene's New Wilderness, which ran for five seasons across the mid-1980s, concluding a few months before his death. Shortly before he died, he was announced as being involved in a proposed followup to Bonanza but died before he could participate.