William Shatner

William Shatner (born March 22, 1931, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) Canadian actor whose prolific output and self-deprecating sense of humour secured him a place in the North American pop culture pantheon. He was best known for playing Capt. James T. Kirk in the science fiction television series Star Trek (1966–69) and in several Star Trek films.

Early life and career

Shatner was raised in Montreal. His father was a menswear manufacturer, and his mother taught elocution. He exhibited an early interest in performance, enrolling at age eight in an acting school for children and later performing in radio productions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the Montreal Children’s Theatre. Despite his early success as a performer, he enrolled at McGill University and graduated in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in commerce.

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Acting in student productions and serving as a CBC broadcaster during his time at McGill, Shatner retained his entertainment connections despite pursuing a more pragmatic course of studies. Upon graduation he became the assistant manager of the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal. There he debuted onstage in a production of Tom Sawyer (1952). He moved to a similar position at the Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa that fall. In 1954 he was recruited to join the newly formed Stratford Shakespeare Festival, helmed by legendary English director Tyrone Guthrie. Shatner spent the ensuing several years playing supporting roles before assuming more-substantial parts, in a range of classic plays. A production of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, in which he played Usumcasane, traveled to Broadway in 1956. Shatner remained in New York City, performing in a range of theatre and television productions.

Shatner’s first major film role came in 1958, when he played Alexi (also spelled Alexey) Karamazov opposite Yul Brynner in an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. He then returned to Broadway for a two-year run in The World of Suzie Wong (1958–60), earning critical acclaim for his performance. He later played a U.S. Army captain in the film Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), about the post-World War II Nürnberg trials.

Star Trek and later acting credits

Shatner worked steadily after that, largely in supporting roles in film and on television. He did not come to wider notice until he was cast as Capt. James T. Kirk in writer and producer Gene Roddenberry’s futuristic new television venture, Star Trek (1966–69). Kirk commanded the starship USS Enterprise on its voyage “to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The short-lived series became a cult hit and spawned an entire subculture of aficionados, known to some as Trekkies.

In 1979 the franchise was revived as a film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Its popularity led to subsequent cinematic installments, including Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), and Star Trek: Generations (1994). Shatner’s later film work was notable for the comedies Miss Congeniality (2000), Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), and Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005).

Amid movie appearances, Shatner continued to work in television, starring in the police drama T.J. Hooker (1982–86) and hosting the crime show Rescue 911 (1989–96), which centred on reenactments of actual crimes and other emergencies. Shatner’s performance as lawyer Denny Crane on David E. Kelley’s legal procedural The Practice earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor in a drama series in 2004. The character was popular enough to precipitate a spin-off, Boston Legal (2004–08), which revolved around his relationship with a younger lawyer. The role earned Shatner Golden Globe and Emmy awards for outstanding supporting actor in a drama in 2005. He subsequently starred in the sitcom $#*! My Dad Says (2010–11). His later TV credits included the travelogue series Better Late Than Never (2016–18), in which he traveled the world with other pop culture icons.

Other work

Shatner was an avocational musician; he released the widely mocked The Transformed Man (1968), an album of spoken-word renderings of popular tunes. He cowrote the memoirs Star Trek Memories (1993), Star Trek Movie Memories (1994), and Up Till Now (2008). The volume Get a Life! (1999) was an exploration of the rabid cultural obsession with Star Trek. Shatner directed a documentary with the same name in 2012. His other directorial credits included Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and the television movie TekWar (1994). The latter was based on a novel (1989) that Shatner conceptualized and collaborated on with another writer. The novel begat a series of books set in the same futuristic universe as well as comic books, merchandise, and a short-lived television series. Shatner chronicled his relationship with Star Trek costar Leonard Nimoy in the memoir Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man (2016; written with David Fisher). Shatner’s other notable credits included the one-man show Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It, which ran on Broadway in 2012 and later toured the country. On October 13, 2021, Shatner became the oldest person in space, when at age 90 he took a suborbital spaceflight on the second flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.