Shatner, William, 1931-

<p>William Shatner OC (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor, author, producer, director, screenwriter, and singer. In his seven decades of acting, he became a cultural icon for his portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise.He has also co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe, and a series of science fiction novels called TekWar that were adapted for television.</p>

<p>Shatner also played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker (1982–1986) and hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 (1989–1996), which won a People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. Shatner also featured in two episodes of the television detective series Columbo almost two decades apart. He also appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun as the alien "Big Giant Head" to which the main characters - also alien - reported. From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane both in the final season of the legal drama The Practice and in its spinoff series Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards. He appeared in both seasons of the comical NBC real-life travelogue with other male companions "of a certain age" in Better Late Than Never, from 2016 to 2018. Shatner has also pursued a career in music and spoken word recordings since the late 1960s, having released eight albums.</p>

<p>Shatner was born in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, Canada to a Conservative Jewish household. His parents were Ann (née Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. He has two sisters, Joy and Farla. His paternal grandfather, Wolf Schattner, anglicized the family name to "Shatner".</p>

<p>All four of Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants. They came from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine and Lithuania).</p>

<p>Shatner attended two schools in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Willingdon Elementary School and West Hill High School, and is an alumnus of the Montreal Children's Theatre. He studied Economics at the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal, Canada, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. In June 2011, McGill University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Letters. Shatner was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from New England Institute of Technology in May 2018.</P>

<p>After graduating from McGill University in 1952, Shatner became the business manager for the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal before joining the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, where he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor. Shatner began performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario in 1954. He played a range of roles at the Stratford Festival in productions that included a minor role in the opening scene of a renowned and nationally televised production of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex directed by Tyrone Guthrie, Shakespeare's Henry V, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, in which Shatner made his Broadway debut in 1956. Shatner was an understudy to Christopher Plummer in Henry V, which afforded him the opportunity to distinguish himself for a performance when Plummer could not go on due to illness. With that performance, Plummer was impressed how Shatner decided not to simply imitate the main actor's mannerisms, but did the opposing move for most of them, thus showing considerable artistic initiative and potential to become a success in his own right. The two actors would later appear as adversaries in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.</p>
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In 1954, he was cast as Ranger Bob on The Canadian Howdy Doody Show.</p>

<p>His film debut was in the Canadian film Butler's Night Off (1951). His first feature role came in the MGM film The Brothers Karamazov (1958) with Yul Brynner, in which he starred as the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, Alexei. In December 1958, he appeared opposite Ralph Bellamy, playing Roman tax collectors in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus' birth in a vignette of a Hallmark Hall of Fame live television production entitled The Christmas Tree directed by Kirk Browning, which featured in other vignettes such performers as Jessica Tandy, Margaret Hamilton, Bernadette Peters, Richard Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, and Carol Channing. Shatner had a leading role in an Alfred Hitchcock Presents third-season (1957–58) episode titled "The Glass Eye", one of his first appearances on American television.</p>

<p>Shatner was cast as Captain James T. Kirk for the second pilot of Star Trek, titled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He was then contracted to play Kirk for the Star Trek series and held the role from 1966 to 1969. During its original run on NBC, the series pulled in only modest ratings and was cancelled after three seasons. In his role as Kirk, Shatner famously kissed actress Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) in the November 22, 1968 Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren". The episode is popularly cited as the first example of a kiss between a white man and a black woman on scripted television in the United States.[24][25][26] In 1973, he returned to the role of Captain Kirk, albeit only in voice, in the animated Star Trek series.</p>
<p>After the cancellation of Star Trek in early 1969, Shatner experienced difficulty in finding work in the early 1970s, having become somewhat typecast from his role as Kirk. With very little money and few acting prospects, Shatner lost his home and lived in a truck-bed camper in the San Fernando Valley until small roles turned into higher-paying jobs. Shatner refers to this part of his life as "that period", a humbling time during which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family.</p>

<p>Besides the Star Trek films, Shatner landed a starring role on television as the titular police officer T. J. Hooker, which ran from 1982 to 1986. He then hosted the popular dramatic re-enactment series Rescue 911 from 1989 to 1996. During the 1980s, Shatner also began directing film and television, directing both numerous episodes of T. J. Hooker and the feature film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.</p>
<p>Shatner has enjoyed success with a series of science fiction novels published under his name, though most are widely believed to have been written by uncredited co-writers such as William T. Quick and Ron Goulart. The first, published in 1989, was TekWar, which Shatner claims he developed initially as a screenplay during a Writers Guild strike that delayed production of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The series of books led to four TekWar television movies, in which Shatner played the role of Walter Bascom, the lead character's boss. A short-lived television series followed, airing on USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel in the United States and CTV in Canada, in which Shatner made several appearances in the Bascom role and directed some of the episodes.</p><p>
In 2011, Shatner starred in The Captains, a feature-length documentary which he also wrote and directed. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains within the Star Trek franchise. Shatner's interviewees included Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine. In the film, Shatner also interviews Christopher Plummer, who is an old friend and colleague from Shatner's days with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.</p>
<p>Shatner began his musical career with the spoken word 1968 album The Transformed Man, delivering exaggerated, interpretive recitations of popular songs like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" paired with readings from famous plays. He performed a reading of the Elton John song "Rocket Man" during the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards that has been widely parodied. Ben Folds, who has worked with him several times, produced and co-wrote Shatner's well-received second studio album, Has Been, in 2004. His third studio album, Seeking Major Tom, was released on October 11, 2011. The fourth, Ponder the Mystery, was released in October 2013 on Cleopatra Records, produced and composed by musician Billy Sherwood (member of Yes). Shatner also has done a concert tour with Circa, which includes an ex and current member of Yes, Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood.</p>

<p>Shatner recorded a wake-up call that was played for the crew of STS-133 in the Space Shuttle Discovery on March 7, 2011, its final day docked to the International Space Station. Backed by the musical theme from Star Trek, it featured a voice-over based on his spoken introduction from the series' opening credits: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before."</p>
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Shatner has been married four times, first to Canadian actress Gloria Rand (née Rabinowitz) on August 12, 1956. The marriage produced three daughters: Leslie (b. 1958), Lisabeth (b. 1961), and Melanie (b. 1964). Shatner left Rand while acting in Star Trek: The Original Series, after which she divorced him in March 1969.

Shatner's second marriage was to Marcy Lafferty, the daughter of producer Perry Lafferty, and lasted from 1973 to 1996.

His third marriage was to Nerine Kidd, from 1997 until her death in 1999. On August 9, 1999, Shatner returned home around 10 p.m. to discover Nerine's body at the bottom of their backyard swimming pool. She was 40 years old. An autopsy detected alcohol and Valium (diazepam) in her blood, and the coroner ruled the cause of death as accidental drowning. The LAPD ruled out foul play, and the case was closed.
In 2001, Shatner married Elizabeth Anderson Martin. In 2004, she co-wrote the song "Together" on Shatner's album Has Been. Shatner filed for divorce from Elizabeth in 2019. The divorce was finalized in January 2020.</p>