MY FINAL FRONTIER
THE STAR TREK LEGEND’S CAREER IS JUST TAKING OFF AGAIN AT 90!
William’s not retiring at 90!
He’s lived life at warp speed – and even though he’s just celebrated his 90th birthday, William Shatner is showing no signs of slowing down.
“I have so few minutes left in my life that I’m tasting each one with delight,” laughs the actor, best known for his role as Captain James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.
For the Canadian actor that means not just playing the leading man in a new rom-com, but also releasing a new music album, fronting a show on the History Channel and possibly even returning to the Star Trek franchise.
“Retire? Retire from what?” he grins. “I’m having the best time!”
Given that his career almost never got off the ground, it’s not surprising that the star, affectionately known as Bill, has no intention of fading away after 56 years in the limelight.
Born in Montreal in 1931, it wasn’t until 1965, struggling to make ends meet with a wife and three young daughters, that he got his big break in Hollywood.
“I did a series pilot at Paramount for a show called Star Trek and a TV network picked it up,” deadpans the actor. It saved his bacon, but the reviews weren’t great and the show was canned after three seasons.
“I was just about broke,” he recalls. “I even lived out of a pick-up truck for a while.”
In an almost unbelievable twist of fate, however, something miraculous was already in the process of happening: the series had been sold cheaply to local American stations and also to TV channels around the world – and its popularity exploded.
After appearing in a string of “awful movies”, the actor suddenly found himself signing on for a series of Star Trek
movies that sealed his name in Hollywood history.
Off-set, the actor has had a turbulent love life. His first marriage to actress Gloria Rand ended in 1969 and his second marriage, to Marcy Lafferty, who played the role of Chief DiFalco in Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
limped to the finish line in 1996.
It was his third marriage, to Nerine Kidd, that broke his heart. “I was struck by her beauty and I fell in love with her,” William says of the moment he first laid eyes on the actress.
Nerine’s struggle with alcoholism meant she spent several stints in rehab. Then, one evening in August 1999, William says he “began to get a strange feeling” when he arrived home and couldn’t find her. He checked in the swimming pool and “saw a dark shape in the deep end”.
He explains, “What appeared to have happened is that Nerine had been drinking outside by the pool, slipped and hit her head and blacked out.”
The postmortem found that her blood-alcohol level was sky-high and there were also traces of Valium in her system.
Recalls William, “The police officer in charge said, ‘I have to tell you, if there was any hint of foul play, you’re the first suspect.’
“It was so clear what had happened that night, but that didn’t stop people from asking those terrible questions. Did Shatner kill his wife? It was insane. I don’t think you ever get over an event like that.”
William had developed a deep friendship with actor Leonard Nimoy, famous for his role as Star Trek’s Mr Spock, and it was Leonard – himself a recovering addict – who guided
his co-star through his grief.
“Leonard helped me try to understand yes, agony belongs to all of us. Agony is part of the soul. Somebody who hasn’t felt agony hasn’t lived, hasn’t participated in what life is. But there is a special agony for somebody who wants to give up the addiction and can’t.
The shame that they must feel. The self-degradation.”
In 2001, William tied the knot for a fourth time, with horse trainer Elizabeth Martin. After 18 years together, the pair separated in 2019 and divorced last year.
The actor remains sanguine about the split, explaining, “Nothing makes me sad at this age,” and the pair were spotted out and about on March 22 this year, celebrating Bill’s 90th birthday.
In 2016, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, only to later learn that it was a false positive and in 2018 he was forced to refute claims on social media that he had died.
Instead, he has remained very much alive. In May this year, his new movie Senior Moment, about a retired
NASA test pilot who loses his licence and finds love on public transport, will be released worldwide.
He is also fronting the History Channel’s show The UnXplained , basking in the glow of recently releasing an album of blues songs and teasing that there might be a place for him in an up-coming Star Trek project.
“I have always felt, like the great comedian George Burns, who lived to 100, I couldn’t die as long as I was booked,” says William philosophically.
“The journey is the thing. It’s so clichéd that I am almost embarrassed. But the day-to-day journey of life is really what it is all about.” #