Captain Kirk finally reached space at 90, aboard a real rocket
For nearly three decades William Shatner commanded a fictional starship. In 2021, at 90, he rode Blue Origin's suborbital NS-18 flight and became the oldest person ever to go to space, one of the first 600 humans to make the trip. The record stood until 2024, when a man 48 days older flew.
A Montreal native from the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood, Shatner arrived on March 22, 1931, the middle child of a clothing manufacturer in a Conservative Jewish household. He trained at the Montreal Children's Theatre, earned a commerce degree from McGill University in 1952, and was already appearing on screen while a student: his first film credit, in 1951, lists him as Bill Shatner playing simply a crook. At the Stratford Festival the director Tyrone Guthrie rated him the most promising actor the company had, and for a while he was spoken of alongside Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.
Stardom was slower than predicted. Moving to New York in 1954, his first American television job was Ranger Bob on The Howdy Doody Show, sharing scenes with puppets. Parts followed in the MGM drama The Brothers Karamazov and on Broadway, and he made two Twilight Zone episodes, including Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, which was remade two decades later as the climax of The Twilight Zone: The Movie. He also starred in Incubus, only the second feature film ever shot entirely in Esperanto. When his legal series For the People was cancelled after 13 episodes, he was free to take the helm of the Enterprise.
He played Captain James T. Kirk from 1966 to 1994, in every episode of the original series, nearly all of the animated one and the first seven films, bowing out in Star Trek Generations. Later he reinvented himself in comedy and drama, as the alien Big Giant Head on 3rd Rock from the Sun and as the attorney Denny Crane on The Practice and Boston Legal from 2004 to 2008.
There is also a curious musical career. Beginning with the 1968 album The Transformed Man, his cover versions are dramatic recitations rather than singing, most famously of Rocket Man and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. McGill gave him an honorary doctorate in 2011.
Source: William Shatner
