Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Simon Nimoy was an American actor and director, famous for playing Spock in the Star Trek franchise for almost 50 years. This includes originating Spock in the original Star Trek series in 1966, then Star Trek: The Animated Series, the first six Star Trek films, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the 2009 Star Trek film, and Star Trek Into Darkness. Nimoy also directed films, including Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Three Men and a Baby, and his career included roles in music videos and video games. In addition to acting and filmmaking, Nimoy was a photographer, author, singer, and songwriter.
Nimoy's acting career began during his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances throughout the 1950s. From 1953 to 1955, he served in the United States Army as a sergeant in the Special Services, an entertainment branch of the American military. He originated and developed Spock beginning with the 1964 Star Trek television pilot "The Cage" and 1965’s "Where No Man Has Gone Before", through series' end in early 1969, followed by eight feature films and guest appearances in spin-offs. From 1967 to 1970, Nimoy had a music career with Dot Records, with his first and second albums mostly as Spock. After the original Star Trek series, Nimoy starred in Mission: Impossible for two seasons, hosted the documentary series In Search of..., appeared in Columbo, and made several well-received stage appearances.
Nimoy's portrayal of Spock made a significant cultural impact and earned him three Emmy Award nominations. His public profile as Spock was so strong that both his autobiographies, I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock, were written from the viewpoint of coexistence with the character. Leonard Nimoy played the elder Spock, with Zachary Quinto portraying a younger Spock, in the 2009 Star Trek reboot film, directed by J. J. Abrams. In 2010, Nimoy announced that he was retiring from playing Spock, citing both his advanced age and the desire to give Quinto full media attention as the character. His final role as Spock was in the 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness.
Nimoy died in February 2015 after a long case of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His death was international news and was met with expressions of shock and grief by fans, Star Trek co-stars, scientists, celebrities, and the media. An asteroid was named 4864 Nimoy in his honor. For the Love of Spock was produced by his son Adam about his life and career, and Remembering Leonard Nimoy was produced by his daughter Julie about his illness.
Early life
Leonard Simon Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931, in an Irish section of the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Ukraine. His parents left Iziaslav separately, his father first walking over the border into Poland while his mother and grandmother were smuggled out of the Soviet Union in a horse-drawn wagon by hiding under bales of hay. They reunited after arriving in the United States. His mother, Dora, was a homemaker, and his father, Max Nimoy, owned a barbershop in the Mattapan section of Boston. He had an elder brother, Melvin.As a child, Nimoy took miscellaneous jobs to supplement his family's income, including selling newspapers and greeting cards, shining shoes, or setting up chairs in theaters, and when he got older, selling vacuum cleaners. He began acting at the age of eight in a children's and neighborhood theater. His parents wanted him to attend college and pursue a stable career, or even learn to play the accordion, so he could always make a living, but his grandfather encouraged him to do what he then wanted to do most, which was acting. Nimoy realized he had an aptitude for singing, which he developed in his synagogue's choir. His singing during his bar mitzvah at age 13 was so good he was asked to repeat his performance the following week at another synagogue. William Shatner said, "He is still the only man I know whose voice was two bar mitzvahs good!"
His first major role was at 17, as Ralphie in an amateur production of Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing!, about the struggles of a matriarchal Jewish family similar to his during the Great Depression. He said, "Playing this teenage kid in this Jewish family that was so much like mine was amazing... The same dynamics, the same tensions in the household." The role "lit a passion" that led to his acting career, with Nimoy saying "I never wanted to do anything else." Shatner has said that Nimoy also worked on local radio shows for children, often voice acting Bible stories:
Nimoy took drama classes at Boston College, and after moving to Los Angeles, he used $600 he saved from selling vacuum cleaners to enroll at the Pasadena Playhouse, supporting himself by working as a theatre usher and a taxicab driver, and stocking vending machines. However, he was soon disillusioned and quit after six months, feeling that the acting skills he had already acquired from earlier roles were more advanced: "I thought, I have to study here three years in order to do this level of work, and I'm already doing better work".
He became a devotee of method acting concepts derived from the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavsky, realizing the stage allowed him to explore his original inspirations for acting: the "psychological, emotional, and physical territories of life that can't be done anywhere else". Between studies, he took a job at an ice cream parlor on the Sunset Strip.
In 1953, Nimoy enlisted in the United States Army Reserve at Fort McPherson Georgia, serving for 18 months until 1955, leaving as a staff sergeant. He had been in the Army Special Services, putting on shows which he wrote, narrated, and emceed. One of his soldiers was Ken Berry, whom he encouraged to go into acting as a civilian and helped contact agents. During that period, he directed and starred in A Streetcar Named Desire, with the Atlanta Theater Guild. Soon after he was discharged, his wife Sandi was pregnant with their second child, and they rented an apartment while he became a cab driver in Los Angeles. He once picked up Senator John F. Kennedy at the Bel Air Hotel in 1956, before the Democratic Convention began on August 13. As the senator was not carrying any cash, Nimoy had to follow him into the Beverly Hilton to collect his $1.25 from someone Kennedy knew. He got a $1.75 tip.
Acting career
Before and during ''Star Trek''
Nimoy spent more than a decade playing only small parts in B movies and the lead in one, along with a minor TV role. He believed his performance as the title role in the 1952 film Kid Monk Baroni would make him a star, but the film failed after a brief cinema showing. During his military career, the film gained a larger audience on television, and after his discharge he got steadier work portraying a "heavy", where his character used street weapons like switchblades and guns or had to threaten or attack people. He overcame his Boston accent, but realized his lean appearance made stardom unlikely.He decided to be a supporting actor rather than take lead roles, an attitude he acquired from his childhood: "I'm a second child who was educated to the idea my older brother was to be given respect and not perturbed. I was not to upstage him So my acting career was designed to be a supporting player, a character actor." He played more than 50 small parts in B movies, television series such as Perry Mason and Dragnet, and serials such as Zombies of the Stratosphere, in which he played a Martian named Narab. To support a wife and two children, he often took other work, such as delivering newspapers, working in a pet shop, and driving cabs.
Nimoy played an army sergeant in the 1954 science fiction thriller Them! and a professor in the 1958 science fiction movie The Brain Eaters, and had a role in The Balcony, a film adaptation of the Jean Genet play. With Vic Morrow, he co-produced Deathwatch, a 1965 English-language film version of Genet's play Haute Surveillance, adapted and directed by Morrow and starring Nimoy. The story deals with three prison inmates. Partly as a result of his role, he then taught drama classes to members of Synanon, a drug rehab center, explaining: "Give a little here and it always comes back".
He had guest roles in the Sea Hunt series from 1958 to 1960 and a minor role in the 1961 The Twilight Zone episode "A Quality of Mercy". He also appeared in the syndicated Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford, and as Luke Reid in the "Night of Decision" episode of the ABC/Warner Bros. western series Colt.45.
Nimoy appeared four times in ethnic roles on NBC's Wagon Train, the number one rated program of the 1961–1962 season. He portrayed Bernabe Zamora in "The Estaban Zamora Story", "Cherokee Ned" in "The Maggie Hamilton Story", Joaquin Delgado in "The Tiburcio Mendez Story", and Emeterio Vasquez in "The Baylor Crowfoot Story".
Nimoy appeared in numerous episodes of Gunsmoke, as well as in Steve Canyon, Bonanza, The Rebel, Two Faces West, Laramie, Rawhide, The Untouchables, The Eleventh Hour, Perry Mason, Combat!, Daniel Boone, The Outer Limits, The Virginian, and Get Smart. He appeared in the 1995 Outer Limits series. He appeared on Gunsmoke in 1961 as Grice, in 1962 as Arnie, and in 1966 as John Walking Fox.
Nimoy and later Star Trek co-star William Shatner first worked together on an episode of the NBC spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Project Strigas Affair". Their characters were from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, though with his saturnine appearance, Nimoy played the villain and Shatner played a reluctant U.N.C.L.E. recruit. By then he had a good reputation in Hollywood as a character actor, and chose Star Trek over a role on Peyton Place.
On the stage, Nimoy played the lead role in a short run of Gore Vidal's Visit to a Small Planet in 1968 at the Pheasant Run Playhouse in St. Charles, Illinois.