Morgan Lofting, the veteran voice actress best known for her turn as the Baroness, the ruthless Cobra chief intelligence officer who brought chaos to G.I. Joe animated series and movies, has died. She was 84.
Lofting died unexpectedly Wednesday at her home in Burbank, her agents Nery Lemus and Christopher Arsaga of CelebWorx announced. “As one of the 10 founding actors at our agency, she meant the world to us and our company,” they said in a statement.
The voice actress also portrayed Aunt May and the Black Cat for a 1981-82 Spider-Man series and Moonracer and Firestar for a 1985 Transformers series, and she did voice work on the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Total Recall (1990), too.
Lofting came up with a European accent for the dark-haired Baroness, a sexy master of disguise and expert in weapons and hand-to-hand combat who sported black-rimmed eyeglasses and a tight black leather outfit.
She voiced the terrorist in G.I. Joe miniseries in 1983, ’84 and ’89; for four seasons of two series that aired in 1985-86 and 1990-91; in the 1986 TV movie G.I. Joe: Arise, Serpentor, Arise!; and in 1987’s straight-to-video G.I. Joe: The Movie.
Her co-star Mike Bell joked that there was “blood on the control room window” after she would shout “Cobraaaa!” she recalled in a 2017 interview.
During that chat, she expressed amazement that the shows she worked on years ago still resonated.
“You take your money, and you go home, and then 30 years later someone says, ‘Hi, I want you to meet my spouse and my children, and you were so important to me when I was growing up,’” she said. “You begin to realize that these characters help people through their lives.”
Born in Cincinnati on Feb. 2, 1940, Lofting also appeared on four episodes of the CBS primetime soap Knots Landing in 1986-87 and in the 1988 film The Night Before, starring Keanu Reeves and Lori Loughlin.
In 1989, she went back to college to finish her bachelor’s degree and then earned her master’s in history at Cal State Northridge. She later found a love of “bartending with books,” as she called it, as a librarian.
She returned to voice acting in 2013 by playing the former villain Fistina on Ben 10: Omniverse.
Survivors include her brother, Tim, his wife, Lynn, and their son, Brian; her son, Justin, and his wife, Stacie; and her grandchildren, Zac and Ellie.
