William Shatner Biography

Fast Facts

• Began acting career as a child on Canadian radio
• Made Broadway debut in Tamburlaine the Great (1956)
• Made film debut in The Brothers Karamazov (1958)
• Early TV career included memorable episodic turns on The Twilight Zone's "Nick of Time" (11/18/60) and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" (10/11/63), and The Man from U
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• 's "The Project Strigas Affair" (11/24/64) with future Star Trek costar Leonard Nimoy
• Shared TV's first interracial kiss on the Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren" (11/22/68) with Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt
• Uhura
• Mask of killer Michael Myers in the original Halloween (1978) was a likeness of his Star Trek character, Captain Kirk, painted white
• Title of his memoir Get a Life! (1999) was derived from a 1986 Saturday Night Live skit spoofing fans of Star Trek
• Varied (and much spoofed) music career includes cult classic The Transformed Man (1968), featuring unique covers of "Mr
• Tambourine Man" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," and Has Been (2004), with Ben Folds, Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins and others
• Made several talked-about appearances reading Sarah Palin's speeches as beat poetry on The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien in 2009