William Shatner Biography, Age, Height & Wifes

William Shatner Biography (Age, Height, Weight, Girlfriend & More)

William Shatner OC is a Canadian actor who was born on March 22, 1931. From his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship Enterprise in the second pilot of the first Star Trek television series to his final appearance as Captain Kirk in the seventh Star Trek feature film, Star Trek Generations, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise (1994).

Shatner started his film and television acting career in Canadian films and productions before going on to guest parts on numerous US television series. He played James Kirk in every episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, 21 of 22 episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and all seven Star Trek movies.

He’s published a series of novels on his experiences before, during, and after his service in Starfleet. He has also co-written many books based in the Star Trek world, as well as the TekWar series of science fiction novels, which have been adapted for television.

Outside of Star Trek, Shatner starred as the titular veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker (1982–1986) and hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 (1989–1996), which earned a People’s Choice Award for Favourite New TV Dramatic Series.

His guest appearances in two episodes of the television detective series Columbo, over two decades apart, were among his numerous similar contributions to television programs from the 1970s through the 2010s.

Following his last appearance as James Kirk, Shatner’s television career spanned comedy, drama, and reality series. He portrayed the extraterrestrial “Big Giant Head” to whom the main protagonists reported in seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun.

From 2004 through 2008, he portrayed attorney Denny Crane in the last season of The Practice and its spinoff Boston Legal, a role that garnered him two Emmy Awards, one for each series. In 2016, 2017, and 2018, he appeared in both seasons of NBC’s Better Late Than Never, a comedic travel show about an ageing celebrity group touring East Asia and Europe.

Aside from performing, Shatner has a singing career that began in 1968 with his album The Transformed Man. His cover renditions of songs are dramatic recitations of their lyrics rather than musical performances; his interpretations of The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” are prominent examples.

Comedians have often mocked his performance of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” when he presented the 5th Saturn Awards in 1978. Seeking Major Tom (2011), his third album, was his most popular, with renditions of Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Shatner traveled into space on a Blue Origin suborbital spaceship in 2021. He became the oldest person to travel in space at the age of 90, and one of the first 600 to do so.  He recounted witnessing the overview effect minutes after landing.

Personal Details

Physical Appearance

Personal Life (Early Life, Family, and Relationship)

Early life, Family, and Relationship

Shatner was born on March 22, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec, to a Conservative Jewish family in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood. Ann (née Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothesmaker, were his parents. He is the middle child of three siblings, with a younger sister, Farla Cohen, and an elder sister, Joy Rutenberg (1928-). (1940–) His patrilineal surname was Schattner, which his grandpa, Wolf Schattner, anglicized. All four of Shatner’s ancestors were Jewish immigrants who came from villages that are now in Ukraine and Lithuania but were then ruled by Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire.

Shatner attended Willingdon Elementary School and West Hill High School in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and is a graduate of the Montreal Children’s Theatre. He earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Economics from the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal in 1952. McGill University bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Letters on him in 2011. In May 2018, he received the same honor from the New England Institute of Technology.

Also, See

• 50 Famous Canadian Male Actors of Today
• 50 Famous Canadian Actress in 2022

William Shatner Success and career

Shatner’s film career started while he was still in college. In 1951, he played a minor role in The Butler’s Night Off, a Canadian comedy-drama: his name is listed as Bill Shatner, and his role is described as “a crook.” He worked as an assistant manager and actor at the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal and the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa after graduation before joining the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.

His Festival roles included one in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, in which he made his Broadway debut in 1956. His brief appearance in the opening scene of Tyrone Guthrie’s high-profile production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex introduced him to television viewers across Canada.

When a kidney stone forced Plummer to withdraw from a performance, Shatner’s decision to present a distinctive interpretation of his role rather than imitating his senior impressed Plummer as a striking manifestation of initiative and potential (Plummer later appeared as a Klingon adversary of Captain Kirk in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country).

Guthrie, too, thought highly of the young Shatner, recalling him as the most promising actor his Festival had employed, and for a time, he was regarded as a potential peer of Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford.

According to Pat Jordan, author of an in-depth profile of Shatner for The New York Times, his subsequent failure to achieve the acclaim accorded to his starrier contemporaries was due to his professional philosophy of “work equals work,” and his participation in many “forgettable” projects that probably did more harm than good to his career.

On the eve of his historic casting as James Kirk, he was seen as merely an actor who “showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheaply, and always answered his phone,” according to Jordan.

In 1954, Shatner decided to leave Stratford and relocate to New York City in order to pursue a career on Broadway. He was soon offered the opportunity to make his first appearance on American television: he created the role of Ranger Bob in The Howdy Doody Show, co-starring with a cast of puppets and a clown, Clarabelle, whose contributions to her dialogue with Shatner consisted entirely of honks on a bicycle horn.

It took him four years to land his first major Hollywood role, as Alexei, the youngest of the Karamazov brothers, in the MGM film The Brothers Karamazov, alongside Yul Brynner. In December 1958, he co-starred with Ralph Bellamy as a Roman tax collector in Bethlehem on the day of Jesus’ birth in The Christmas Tree, a Hallmark Hall of Fame live television production directed by Kirk Browning and starring Jessica Tandy, Margaret Hamilton, Bernadette Peters, Richard Thomas, Cyril Ritchard, and Carol Channing.

His US television profile rose even higher when he starred in “The Glass Eye,” an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents during the third (1957-58) season. Shatner (left) and Kurt Kasznar (right) in the canceled 1959 CBS television series Nero Wolfe

Shatner garnered positive reviews for his Broadway performance as Lomax in The World of Suzie Wong in 1959. While still starring in that production in March of that year, he also portrayed detective Archie Goodwin in what would have been television’s first Nero Wolfe series had it not been canceled by CBS after filming a pilot and a few episodes.

William Shatner participated in two episodes of The Twilight Zone, “Nick of Time” (1960) and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (1963); when a Twilight Zone portmanteau film was made twenty years later, it culminated with a recreation of the latter episode.

He co-starred with Barton MacLane in NBC’s Outlaws (1960) Western series as Wayne Gorham, and then returned to Alfred Hitchcock Presents for a fifth-season episode, “Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?” In 1961, he co-starred with Julie Harris in Harold Clurman’s A Shot in the Dark; Gene Saks and Walter Matthau also performed in the play, with Matthau earning a Tony Award for his performance. Shatner appeared in two episodes of NBC’s Thriller (“The Grim Reaper” and “The Hungry Glass”), as well as the film The Explosive Generation (1961).

He played the lead in Roger Corman’s film The Intruder (1962) and garnered rave reviews for his appearance in Stanley Kramer’s film Judgement at Nuremberg (1961). William Shatner was featured in one episode of the ABC series Channing during the 1963-1964 season. In 1963, he appeared in the Family Theater play “The Soldier,” and he was also included in later episodes of The Psalms series. That same year, he appeared as a guest star on Route 66 in the episode “Build Your Houses with Backs to the Sea.”

Unknown Facts:

• He began his career as a young entertainer in Canada.
• 12 years before Star Trek, “Kirk” and “Scotty” traveled to space!
• On television, he appeared with Steve McQueen.
• He appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes, one of which was one of the greatest!
• Prior to Star Trek, he appeared in a TV program.
• In actual life, “Kirk” and “Spock” were great friends.
• Barbary Coast was a successful return.
• On T.J. Hooker, he became a director.
• He received two Emmy nominations for portraying the same role on two distinct series.
• Bonus! He’s an unusual social media sensation who has no intention of retiring!

William Shatner Biography (Age, Height, Weight, Girlfriend & More)