‘I was broke, divorced and living in a truck ...with my dog’
DYLAN THOMAS thought the elderly should rage against the dying of the light. William Shatner is otherwise inclined. Now, 93, the ever-chipper star – world renowned as Star Trek’s iconic Captain Kirk – is busier than popcorn in a hot pan. His first official biographical film, You Can Call Me Bill, out this month, is a meditation on his life, career and mortality.
When he dies, he says, he wants to be “planted like a seed” to feed a redwood tree. “I read about that being done and it appealed to me,” the Montreal-born actor tells me.
A cryogenic company recently offered to preserve his body in ice. “I was tempted, because it’s so futuristic, but I turned them down. I’d rather have a tree over me than a freezer lid.”
Bill looks and sounds decades younger than he is. Constantly curious, his Kirk-like sense of adventure has recently seen him swim with sharks. In 2021 he became the oldest man in space courtesy of Blue Origin’s suborbital flight in 2021, with Jeff Bezos.
“It’s a lot to do with genetics, but certainly being active is a factor in fending off old age, whether it’s exercise, or writing a book, or in my case performing,” he says.
“Performing, especially on stage, requires a lifeforce. If you don’t have that, you really can’t go on. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never been so severely ill that it’s robbed me of that lifeforce; because as you get older, your bones become more brittle, you’re seeing more doctors…it’s very easy at a certain point to say ‘I just wanna rock in my rocking chair’.”
The new film mixes interviews with clips from his many starring roles; including Kirk, tough cop TJ Hooker and his Emmy-winning turn as Boston Legal’s brilliant Denny Crane.
He also talks about tougher times – like having to fight at school because of antisemitism. When I ask him about it he shrugs and says, “Doesn’t everybody fight every day at school? It has affected me all my life, being bullied and fighting back and winning – sometimes more than one guy would jump me.”
Bill says he has no friends. Really? “How do you define friendship? What is a friend, Garry? Someone you have a pint with and watch the game? You know what a friend is when you’re a kid, but what’s a friend when you’re an adult? Is it your wife, is it your lover?
“The guy who came closest, because we were equal in fame and fortune and all that, was Leonard Nimoy.
“He was that dear friend, that brother, and it was because he didn’t have anything to gain from telling anyone ‘Shatner said this…’
“He wanted nothing from me but company and friendship, and vice versa.”
Nimoy played Spock on Star Trek, the sci-fi show that rocketed them both to fame. Launched in 1966, it remains one of popular culture’s highest-grossing media franchises. Yet it was axed in 1969 after just three series, and only resurrected after it became a cult smash in syndication.
Bill later reprised the Kirk role in seven feature films, directing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. “As an actor, my attitude was: I’ll take the job, I’ll do the best job I can, maybe it’ll be successful. I didn’t make much money from it.
“When it ended I went out to small theatres. I was broke, I was divorced, I had three kids, and I was living in a truck, like a bum, sleeping with my dog.”
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July 1969, Bill was parked in a Long Island pasture gazing up at it. Those bad days lasted “about six months,” he says.
Shatner had a life before Star Trek.
His acting credits range from Shakespeare and an award-winning 1958 role in Broadway play The World Of Suzie Wong, to voicing villainous Zeldor in Netflix’s Masters Of The Universe: Revolution.
He played the title role in a 1955 production of Billy Budd live on Canadian TV, when Basil Rathbone got his foot caught in a bucket and it wouldn’t come off. “It was like Charlie Chaplin.”
Shatner has cheerfully sent himself up in TV adverts and sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory, and demonstrated his comic delivery hosting Saturday Night Live, jokingly taunting Trekkies with an exasperated cry of “Get a life!”
There’s no pomposity in Bill. In conversation
ful, sharp, and self-aware. His 2024 ll of forthcoming appearances at US nd comic-book conventions, fan d Star Trek weekenders. stmas week he’s (boldly) going on a ission to explore Antarctica on the Space2sea.
E ENTHUSES: “I’ve never been – I’m looking forward to it so much,. You can sail with me, and a few l-known people” – including NASA Scott Kelly and Shatner’s fellow t passengers. “We’re going to discover ves the magic of this still largely continent, in expert company. It’s the voyage of a lifetime, and there are still cabins available. Just go to my website.”
Shatner isn’t ticking off a bucket-list, he says, just cherry-picking a constant stream of offers.
“I take every offer very seriously and adjudicate, are they good things to get behind?
“Would I be able to live with it? Would I have time to do the publicity?
“There are half a dozen things I’m doing that are so much part of what science is about to begin. I find it exciting and fascinating.
“I’m indulging in things that should live long after I do.”
He mentions a new medical device that can tell if you’re healthy from your saliva, and a business whose “asset passport” technology can authenticate collectables.
“I joined a company that can beam me over to you – not me but my 3D image. It’s so realistic that you think it is me. Just after, I got asked to go to Australia and said, I can’t make it but I can send my image.
“When I asked how it went, they said it was better than me being there.”
He still narrates The Unxplained With William Shatner on Sky History and this month releases his ecologically themed album,
Where Will The Animals Sleep?
Aimed at children under 12, it is created with Dan Miller (of They Might Be Giants) and young adults author Rob Sharenow.
He has just released So Fragile, So Blue – a recording of his 2022 spoken-word performance at Washington DC’S Kennedy Centre backed by the National Symphony Orchestra.
The film and album were directly inspired by his space flight which left him “weeping uncontrollably” out of fear for Earth’s future.
“I could see how small it was. It’s a rock with two miles of air. That’s all that we have and we’re **** ing it up. I saw that dramatically, in that moment.”
THE ACTOR turned author and recording artist is also an equestrian – he’s in the horse breeders’ hall of fame and runs the Hollywood Charity Horseshow, raising millions for disabled children and military veterans.
Four-times-married Bill is passionate about his adopted homeland. “America is a great country; America has great people and that’s the vast majority. I talk to lots of people and don’t see the discord, hate and name-calling we see on TV. The people have an innate intelligence. That intelligence exists in America today – it hasn’t had a chance to speak out.”
Shatner doesn’t plan much. “I’ve bumbled through life with a growing realization that all plans are dependent on things you have no control over, accidents, whether physical or emotional. But I’ll keep embracing new things.
“I kick a can down the street. You don’t know the future. The future is unheralded.”