Shatner began his screen acting career in Canadian films and television productions before moving into guest-starring roles in various American television shows. He appeared as Captain Kirk in all the episodes ofStar Trek: The Original Series, 21 of the 22 episodes ofStar Trek: The Animated Series, and the first sevenStar Trek movies. He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences before, during and after his time in aStarfleet uniform. He has also co-written several novels set in theStar Trek universe and a series of science fiction novels, theTekWar sequence, that were adapted for television. OutsideStar Trek, Shatner played the eponymous veteran police sergeant inT. J. Hooker (1982–1986), hosted the reality-based television seriesRescue 911 (1989–1996), guest starred on the detective seriesColumbo, and acted in the comedy filmMiss Congeniality (2000).
Shatner's television career after his last appearance as Captain Kirk embraces comedy, drama and reality shows. In seasons 4 and 5 of theNBC series3rd Rock from the Sun, he plays the alien "Big Giant Head" to whom the main characters report. From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorneyDenny Crane in the final season of the legal showThe Practice and the entire run of its spinoff,Boston Legal. The role of Denny Crane won Shatner twoEmmy Awards, one for his contributions to each series.
In 2016, 2017 and 2018, he starred in both seasons of NBC'sBetter Late Than Never, a comical travel series in which a band of elderly celebrities toured east Asia and Europe.[3]
In 2021, Shatner flew into space aboardBlue Origin NS-18, aBlue Origin sub-orbital capsule. At age 90 he became the oldest person to fly in space and one of the first 600 to do so.[6][7] In 2024Ed Dwight, also age 90, but 48 days older than Shatner, flew on the suborbitalBlue Origin NS-25 spaceflight.[8]
Early life
Shatner was born on March 22, 1931, in theNotre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood ofMontreal, Quebec, Canada, to aConservative Jewish household.[9] His parents were Ann (née Garmaise; 1905–1992) and Joseph Shatner (1898–1967), a clothing manufacturer.[10] He is the middle of three children; his older sister was Joy Rutenberg (1928–2023) and his younger sister is Farla Cohen (1940–).[11][12] His patrilineal family name was Schattner; his grandfather, Wolf Schattner, anglicized the spelling.[13] All four of Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from settlements inUkraine andLithuania, which were then under the rule ofAustria-Hungary and theRussian Empire.[14][15]
Shatner's movie career began while he was still attending college. In 1951, he had a small role in a Canadian comedy drama,The Butler's Night Off: its credits list him as Bill Shatner, and describe his role simply as "a crook".[23] After graduating, he worked as an assistant manager and actor at both the Mountain Playhouse in Montreal and the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa before joining theStratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.[24]
His roles at the festival included a part inMarlowe'sTamburlaine, in which he made his Broadway debut in 1956. His brief appearance in the opening scene of a high-profile production ofSophocles'sOedipus Rex byTyrone Guthrie introduced him to television viewers across the whole of Canada.[25][26] InHenry V, he combined playing the minor role of the Duke of Gloucester with understudyingChristopher Plummer as the king: when a kidney stone obliged Plummer to withdraw from a performance, Shatner's decision to present a distinctive interpretation of his role rather than imitating his senior's impressed Plummer as a striking manifestation of initiative and potential.[27] Plummer later appeared as a Klingon adversary of Captain Kirk's inStar Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Guthrie too rated the young Shatner very highly, later recalling him as the most promising actor that his Festival employed, and for a time, he was seen as a potential peer ofSteve McQueen,Paul Newman andRobert Redford. In the view of Pat Jordan, author of an in-depth profile of Shatner forThe New York Times, his subsequent failure to achieve the acclaim accorded to his starrier contemporaries was attributable to his professional philosophy of "work equals work", and his consequent participation in many "forgettable" projects that probably did his career more harm than good. On the eve of his momentous casting as James Kirk, he was in Jordan's opinion seen merely as an actor who "showed up on time, knew his lines, worked cheap and always answered his phone".[25]
Shatner in a publicity photo in 1958
In 1954, Shatner decided to leave Stratford and move to New York City in the hope of building a career on the Broadway stage. He was soon offered the chance to make his first appearance on American television: in a children's program calledThe Howdy Doody Show, he created the role of Ranger Bob, co-starring with a cast of puppets andClarabell the Clown, whose dialogue with Shatner consisted entirely of honks on a bicycle horn.[28]
In 1959, Shatner received good reviews in the role of Lomax inThe World of Suzie Wong on Broadway. In the March of that year, while still performing in that production, he also played detectiveArchie Goodwin in what would have been television's firstNero Wolfe series, had it not been aborted byCBS after shooting a pilot and a few episodes.[29]
TheAlexander series was not picked up, and the pilot remained unaired until 1968, when it was repackaged as a TV movie to capitalize on the fame that West and Shatner had won in the interim. Shatner had hoped that the series would be a major success, but West was apparently unsurprised by its failure to proceed, later castigating the pilot for "one of the worst scripts I have ever read" and recalling it as "one of the worst things I've ever done."[32][33]
In 1965, Shatner guest-starred in12 O'Clock High as Major Curt Brown in the episode "I Am the Enemy". In the same year, he had the lead role in a legal drama,For the People, starring as anassistant district attorney married to a woman played byJessica Walter; the show's cancellation after its 13-episode first season allowed him to walk onto the bridge of theEnterprise the following year.
Shatner starred in the 1966gothic horror filmIncubus (Esperanto:Inkubo) the second feature-length movie ever made with all dialogue spoken inEsperanto. He also starred in an episode ofGunsmoke in 1966 as the character Fred Bateman. He appeared as attorney-turned-counterfeiter Brett Skyler in a 1966 episode ofThe Big Valley, "Time to Kill". In 1968, he starred in the little knownSpaghetti WesternWhite Comanche, playing both a white-hat character and his black-hat evil twin: Johnny Moon, a virtuous half-Comanche gunslinger, and Notah, a bloodthirsty warlord.
Shatner was cast as CaptainJames T. Kirk for the second pilot ofStar Trek, titled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He was then contracted to play Kirk for the remainder of the show, and he sat in the captain's chair of the USSEnterprise from 1966 to 1969. During its original run on NBC, the series achieved only modest ratings, and it was cancelled after three seasons and seventy-nine episodes.Plato's Stepchildren, aired on November 22, 1968, earned Shatner a footnote in the history of American race relations: akiss that Captain Kirk planted on the lips of LieutenantUhura (Nichelle Nichols) is often cited as the first example of a white man kissing a black woman on scripted television in the United States.[34][35][36] In 1973, Shatner returned to the role of Kirk, albeit only in voice, in theanimatedStar Trek series, which ran for two seasons and twenty-two episodes.
1970–1978: overcoming typecasting
In the early 1970s, in the immediate aftermath of the cancellation ofStar Trek in 1969, Shatner experienced difficulty in finding employment, having become somewhat typecast as James Tiberius Kirk. With very little money and few acting prospects, he lost his home and was for a time so poor that he was reduced to living in a truck-bed camper in theSan Fernando Valley. He refers to this part of his life as "that period", a humbling time during which he would take any odd job, including small party appearances, to support his family.
To supplement his income from acting, Shatner performed as a celebrity guest in a multitude of television game shows, among themBeat the Clock,Celebrity Bowling,The Hollywood Squares,Match Game,Tattletales andMike Stokey'sStump the Stars.[25] Hiscurriculum vitae in this genre included several visits toThe $10,000 Pyramid and its more generous sequels, shows in which contestants attempted to guess a word or phrase with the help of hints from a famous partner. Shatner's contributions to the Pyramid series included a week-long match-up that pitted him against Leonard Nimoy in an event billed as "Kirk versus Spock". In a 1977 episode, he perpetrated a blunder that has been preserved on YouTube: at the climax of the show, attempting to guide his partner to the phrase "things that are blessed", he blurted out the word "blessed" instead of, as he had intended, citing theVirgin Mary. His mistake meant that the contestant paired with him was automatically disqualified from receiving what would have been a prize of $20,000. Shatner was so furious at himself over his error that he leapt out of his chair, picked it up and threw it out of the show's iconic Winner's Circle.[37] During anArchive of American Television interview,Richard Dawson disclosed that whenMark Goodson was considering whom to employ as the host of the pilot ofFamily Feud (1976), he would have chosen Shatner if he had not been intimidated into awarding the position to Dawson by a threat from Dawson's agent.[38]
Advertising agencies also played a part in helping Shatner through his post-Kirk doldrums. Among the television commercials for which he was hired were spots promotingGeneral Motors'Oldsmobile brand,Promisemargarine, theBritish Columbia-based supermarket chainSuperValu and itsOntarian equivalent,Loblaws; Canadian viewers became familiar with the former hero ofStarfleet reassuring them that "At Loblaws, more than the price is right. But, by gosh, the price is right."[39][40]
1979–1989:Star Trek movies andT. J. Hooker
AfterStar Trek was cancelled, it acquired acult following among people watchingsyndicated reruns of the series, and Captain Kirk became acultural icon.[25] Fans of the show—so-calledTrekkies—began organizingconventions where they could meet like-minded enthusiasts, buyStar Trek merchandise and enjoy question and answer sessions with members of the show's regular cast. Many of the actors who had crewed theEnterprise became frequent guests at these events, Shatner included.[41]
Although the resurrection ofStar Trek from oblivion only came about because of the enthusiasm of Trekkies, Shatner's attitude towards them is not uncritical. In a much-discussed 1986Saturday Night Live sketch about aStar Trek convention, he advised a room full of Trekkies to "get a life".[25][42] The comment was an apt summary of the view of his fans that he had expressed in several interviews.[42] Their adoration of him took unwelcome forms almost from the beginning of his time as Captain Kirk; as early as April 1968, a group of them attempted to tear his clothes from him as he left30 Rockefeller Plaza.[43] His amusement at the behaviour of the lunatic fringe of his admirers was reflected in the romantic comedy movieFree Enterprise (1998), in which he contributed a caricature of himself to a film that satirized some Trekkies' Kirk idolatry. He also mocked the cavalier, almost superhuman, persona of Captain Kirk in the filmsAirplane II: The Sequel (1982) andNational Lampoon'sLoaded Weapon 1 (1993).
In 1982, Shatner was once again the leading character of a high-profile television show when he was cast as a veteran Los Angeles police sergeant inT. J. Hooker. Running for five seasons and ninety-one episodes until 1986, the series partnered Shatner withHeather Locklear andJames Darren, later to be a recurring cast member of the third live-actionStar Trek show,Deep Space Nine. The success ofT. J. Hooker led to Shatner's hosting the popular dramatic re-enactment seriesRescue 911 from 1989 to 1996. His career diversified further in the 1980s when he began working as a director, taking charge of many episodes ofT. J. Hooker. A clause in hisStar Trek contract giving him parity withLeonard Nimoy meant that after Nimoy's directing ofStar Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Shatner was entitled to direct aStar Trek movie too: he exercised his right inStar Trek V: The Final Frontier, although many Trekkies were disappointed by the film that he delivered, something that he attributed principally to the weakness of the movie's visual effects. His growing success on television and in movie theatres in the 1980s did not lead him to stop working for advertisers. TheVIC-20home computer, for example, was endorsed by him both on television and in print.
On May 19, 1983, the iconic status of Captain Kirk was acknowledged with a ceremony celebrating Shatner's being awarded the 1,762nd star on theHollywood Walk of Fame. Shatner also has a star onCanada's Walk of Fame, granted to him in recognition of his being the first Canadian actor to star in major series on three American networks—NBC, CBS and ABC.
1989–1999:TekWar and other diversifications
Working onT. J. Hooker inspired Shatner with the idea of developing a television show in which he would play a character that would be a hybrid of Hooker and Kirk—a hard-boiled former police officer working as a private investigator in a dystopian future. When the production ofStar Trek V was delayed by a Writer's Guild strike, Shatner began transforming his initial concept into a novel, assisted by an established author of pulp science fiction,Ron Goulart. Goulart described his contribution to Shatner's endeavour as merely that of an adviser, but Shatner credits him with rewriting. The first fruit of their collaboration,TekWar, was published in 1989, and launched a sequence of books that sold hundreds of thousands of copies.[44][45] The novels led to fourTekWar television movies, in which Shatner played not the lead character but his boss, Walter Bascom. Shatner reprised the role in atelevision series that followed, as well as directing several episodes of it himself, but its run on theUSA Network,Syfy and Canada'sCTV was brief.
In December 1989, Shatner took part in the British television seriesThis Is Your Life, a show in which a celebrity is ambushed by the host and then taken to a studio for the story of his life to be told in a stream of anecdotes related by his acquaintances: Shatner's episode began withMichael Aspel taking him by surprise on the set of theStarship Enterprise atUniversal Studios in Hollywood. In 1994, Shatner revisitedColumbo to play the murderer-of-the-week in the episode "Butterfly in Shades of Grey". In 1995, he narrated Peter Kuran's documentary filmTrinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, and his TekWar franchise expanded into the world of computer games with afirst-person shooter release,William Shatner's TekWar. In 1996, an episode entitledEye, Tooth saw him guest-starring inWill Smith's television show,The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He narrated a television miniseries shot in New ZealandA Twist in the Tale (1998). In the television series3rd Rock from the Sun, Shatner appeared in several 1999–2000 episodes as the "Big Giant Head", a high-ranking officer from the same alien planet as the Solomon family who becomes a womanizing party-animal on Earth. The role earned Shatner an Emmy Award nomination.[46]
In the late 1990s, Shatner became closely associated with the travel websitepriceline.com, appearing in many television commercials for the company as a pompous caricature of himself.[25][47] He has said that while it is true that his work for priceline earned himstock options, reports that they are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars are exaggerated.[48][49] He was also the chief executive officer of theToronto, Ontario-basedC.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, a special effects studio that operated from 1994 to 2010.[50]
In May 1999,Simon & Schuster published Shatner's bookGet a Life!, a memoir of his experiences with Trekkies. As well as anecdotes aboutStar Trek conventions, the book features interviews with some of the most devoted fans of theStar Trek franchise, including conversations with several Trekkies who regard the show not just as entertainment but as philosophically significant.[51]
2000–2009: Further films, and Denny Crane
Shatner, 2005
In theSandra Bullock comedy movieMiss Congeniality (2000), Shatner played the supporting role of Stan Fields, the co-host of the Miss United States Pageant; his futureBoston Legal co-starCandice Bergen took part in the film too. Shatner also appeared inMiss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005), in which Stan Fields is kidnapped in Las Vegas together with the winner of the pageant of the previous year. (Life imitated art in Gary, Indiana in 2001, when Shatner visited the town to host theMiss USA Pageant for real). InOsmosis Jones (2001), a high-concept satirical movie that blended live action with animation, Shatner voiced Mayor Phlegmming; the film depicted the cells andmicrobiota of a human body as the citizens of a community, the city of Frank, governed by an egoistic politician who prioritizes his convenience and political self-interest over the welfare of his public. InGroom Lake, released the following year, Shatner repeated hisStar Trek V feat of directing and starring in a movie based on a story of his own invention—a film exploiting the interest inArea 51 kindled byThe X-Files, and co-starring a youngAmy Acker, later best known as a regular colleague ofJoss Whedon. In 2003, Shatner appeared inBrad Paisley'sCelebrity andOnline music videos along withLittle Jimmy Dickens,Jason Alexander andTrista Rehn. He also had a supporting role in the comedyDodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004), which starredBen Stiller andVince Vaughn. In the October 2004 issue ofStar Trek Communicator,Manny Coto, one of the producers ofStar Trek: Enterprise, revealed that he was planning a three-episode story arc guest-starring Shatner, but the cancellation of the series shortly afterwards meant that Shatner was denied the opportunity to take part in it.
AfterDavid E. Kelley saw Shatner's commercials,[25] he brought Shatner on to the final season of the legal dramaThe Practice. According to Pat Jordan, Shatner's Emmy Award-winning role, the eccentric but highly capable attorney Denny Crane, was essentially "William Shatner the man ... playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner."[25] Shatner took the Crane role toBoston Legal and won a Golden Globe and an Emmy in 2005, and was Emmy nominated again in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. With his 2005 Emmy accolade, he became one of the few actors (along with co-starJames Spader asAlan Shore) to win an Emmy Award while playing the same character in two different shows. Shatner remained withBoston Legal until, after five seasons and one hundred and one episodes, it ended in 2008.
Two high-profile animated pictures released in 2006 featured Shatner in their cast. InDreamWorks'Over the Hedge, he voiced Ozzie, an opossum; inWalt Disney'sThe Wild, he had the role of the movie's villain, Kazar, a megalomaniacal wildebeest. In January 2007, he began posting daily autobiographicalvlogs on the LiveVideo platform in a project that he namedShatnerVision; rebranded asThe Shatner Project, his vlogging migrated to YouTube the following year.[52][53] In December 2008, he experimented with the chat show genre in the humorousShatner's Raw Nerve, which aired until March 2011. He expanded his work on YouTube in 2009, supplying the voice of Don Salmonella to the animated seriesThe Gavones.[54]
Shatner made several guest appearances onThe Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, including in cameos in which he made fun of the Republican politicianSarah Palin. He opened mock-hostilities on July 27, 2009, with apoetry slam inspired recitation of thespeech in which she had resigned the governorship ofAlaska.[55][56][57][58] Two days later, he ridiculed some of the tweets that she and Levi Johnston, the father of her grandchild, had published on Twitter.[59] On December 11, 2009, he returned to Palin once more to read excerpts from her autobiography,Going Rogue: An American Life, and she, taking his teasing in good part, responded by reciting extracts from his own memoir,Up Till Now.[60][61][62] (Co-written with David Fisher, later to collaborate with Shatner on a book about Leonard Nimoy and Shatner's relationship with him,Up Till Now had been published in 2008.) Shatner also contributed to O'Brien's recurring "In the Year 3000" feature, which began with Shatner's disembodied head floating in space and delivering the segment's portentous tag line: "And so we take a cosmic ride into that new millennium; that far off reality that is the year 3000. It's the future, man".
Shatner was not "offered or suggested" a role in the 2009 filmStar Trek.[63][64] DirectorJ. J. Abrams said in July 2007 that the production was "desperately trying to figure out a way to put him in" but that to "shove him in ... would be a disaster",[65] an opinion echoed by Shatner in several interviews. At a convention held in 2010, Shatner described the film as "wonderful". Two years before its release, his own tale of how the characters of the original series ofStar Trek might have come together was published in his novelStar Trek: Academy – Collision Course.[66]
2010–present: a miscellany of projects
In April 2010, Shatner began hosting theDiscovery Channel showWeird or What?, which aired until August 2012. Each episode of the series supplied lovers of arcana with several segments exploring news reports relating to left-field topics such asUFOs andcryptozoology.[67]Later that year, his career as a comic television actor reached its zenith in a CBS sitcom based onJustin Halpern's Twitter feedShit My Dad Says,$#*! My Dad Says, which was cancelled in May 2011 three months after the first broadcast of its final episode.[68] 2011 also saw him guest-starring in one episode of the USA Network'sPsych, "In for a Penny", playing the estranged father of Junior DetectiveJuliet O'Hara (Maggie Lawson) (a role that he reprised in the show's 2012 season). For Trekkies, his most notable project of the year was the firstStar Trek film that he had directed sinceStar Trek V.The Captains, which he also wrote and presented, was a feature-length documentary in which he interviewed all five of the actors who had played the principal role in theStar Trek sequels that had been created up to that point—Patrick Stewart ofStar Trek: The Next Generation,Avery Brooks ofStar Trek: Deep Space Nine,Kate Mulgrew ofStar Trek: Voyager,Scott Bakula ofStar Trek: Enterprise andChris Pine ofJ. J. Abrams's 2009 movie. The film also included a conversation between Shatner and hisStar Trek VI co-star Christopher Plummer, a sequence celebrating a friendship that began when the two actors both took part in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and reflecting Shatner's profound admiration for his colleague.[69]
Shatner's 2012 began with his return to his roots in theatre. In February, he appeared on Broadway in a one-man show calledShatner's World: We Just Live in It. After a three-week run at theMusic Box, the show toured throughout the United States.[70] In May, he was the guest presenter on the Britishsatirical television quiz showHave I Got News for You, earning a footnote in the history ofneologisms by melding "pioneer" and "pensioner" into theportmanteau coinage "pensioneer".[71][72] On July 28, he appeared on the premium cable TV channelEpix as the star ofGet a Life!, a documentary film aboutStar Trek fandom developed from the 1999 book about Trekkies that he had written in the aftermath of hisSaturday Night Live rebuke to them.[73][74] On September 25, he revisited the music video genre, appearing as ahome plate umpire in the crooner Brian Evans's baseball-themed "At Fenway".[75]
Shatner at Destination Star Trek Europe, 2016
On April 24, 2014, Shatner performed an autobiographical one-man show on Broadway, which was filmed for subsequent screening in more than 700 theatres across Australia, Canada and the United States. A large portion of the revenue of the project went to charity.[76] In 2015, he playedMark Twain in an episode of the Canadian historical crime drama seriesMurdoch Mysteries,[77] and Croatoan – the dangerous, interdimensional father of Audrey Parker – in the last episodes of the fifth and final season of SyFy channel's fantasy seriesHaven.[78] In the August of that year, Trekkies were treated to a sequel toThe Captains which he produced, scripted and directed and in which he starred:William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge, a behind-the-scenes documentary film aboutStar Trek: The Next Generation.[79]
Premiering on August 23, 2016, the NBC reality miniseriesBetter Late Than Never followed Shatner and a quartet of other aging celebrities—Terry Bradshaw,Jeff Dye,George Foreman andHenry Winkler—as they took a grand tour around Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.[80] Shatner joked that Bradshaw, famous as a quarterback with thePittsburgh Steelers, was "putty in my hands".[81] Another new enterprise that he launched that year was Shatner Singularity, a publisher of comic-books, which has a list including the graphic novelStan Lee's "God Woke" byLee and Mariano andFabian Nicieza.[82] The book won the 2017Independent Publisher Book Awards' Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.[83]
Shatner's most notable television work in 2017 was in the second season ofBetter Late Than Never: a preview episode of December 11, 2017, was followed by an official season premiere on the New Year's Day of 2018. His equestrian enthusiasm found an outlet in the animated children's showMy Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, where in the seventh season episode "The Perfect Pear" he supplied the voice of Grand Pear, the estranged maternal grandfather of Applejack and her siblings. 2017 also saw him appearing in a second music video with Brian Evans, this time promoting Evans's cover of the Dolly Parton song "Here You Come Again".[84]
William Shatner
(@WilliamShatner)
tweeted:
"My prayers are with the people of the Ukraine, as I watch events unfolding on TV with such brave people fighting an overwhelming force, I am reminded ironically enough of Stalingrad, when the Nazis, on their way to Moscow, thought they could overwhelm that city. The people of Stalingrad & the army defending Stalingrad fought the Nazis to a standstill. History CAN repeat itself."
Shatner became the focus of political controversy in 2021, when it was revealed that a popular science documentary show that he would host,I Don't Understand with William Shatner, was scheduled to be aired onRT, formerly known as Russia Today, from July 12. RT's editor-in-chief,Margarita Simonyan, said that "Captain Kirk has come over to the good side." Criticized by a Russian journalist for his involvement with the government-controlled outlet, Shatner branded his accuser a hypocrite and compared his contract with RT to the arrangement through which the channel had acquired the right to broadcast American football games.[86] Four days after theRussian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Shatner issued a statement via Twitter expressing unqualified support for the Ukrainians in the resistance that they were mounting against their assailants. On March 2, he withdrew from his show, citing the invasion as his reason for doing so. RT America ceased transmitting altogether on March 3.[87]
Also in 2021, Shatner starred in the filmSenior Moment, which co-starredJean Smart andChristopher Lloyd. The movie was released in March 2021 on the same week Shatner turned 90.
In 2022, Shatner competed inseason eight ofThe Masked Singer as "Knight" (depicted as a knight riding a golden goose). A running gag is that the golden goose that "Knight" rides keeps trying to attackNick Cannon. He was eliminated in the first episode alongsideEric Idle as "Hedgehog" andChris Kirkpatrick as "Hummingbird".[88]
Shatner hosted and executive-producedThe UnXplained onHistory from 2019 to 2023.[citation needed] Since its premiere the show has received very negative reviews from critics. Writing inIrish Film Critic, Thomas Tunstall reported that the show's "subject matter runs all over the board", as if designed for an audience with attention deficit disorder. Though Shatner enthusiastically poses many questions, he provides far fewer satisfactory answers than he should – perhaps by design to retain the sense of mystery."[89]
Shatner made his recording debut in 1968, with the release of an album titledThe Transformed Man. It offered readings from classic plays followed by dramatically inflected recitations of the texts of thematically related popular songs, both set against a background of instrumental accompaniment. Among the hits that Shatner covered were Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and theLennon–McCartney song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."[91] Shatner would stay loyal to his idiosyncratic, talk-singing style from this album throughout his recording career.
In 1977, a performance that Shatner had given during a tour in 1971 was released on a Lemli Records double album,William Shatner Live. The LPs' bill of fare included him reminiscing about his work onStar Trek and reading excerpts fromEdmond Rostand'sCyrano de Bergerac,H. G. Wells'sThe War of the Worlds andBertolt Brecht'sGalileo.[92] A year later, the recording was reissued by another company, again as a double LP, now titledWilliam Shatner Live: Captain of the Starship. Devoid ofStar Trek branding because of licensing restrictions, the album's sleeve was decorated with a photograph of Shatner brandishing an upturned camera tripod in the style of Jim Kirk going into battle with a phaser rifle.[93]
Shatner's fifteen-track albumPonder the Mystery, produced byBilly Sherwood, was issued in October 2013. Among the musicians who contributed to it wereMick Jones,Simon House,Steve Vai,Al Di Meola, Steve Howe's Yes colleagueRick Wakeman, Joel Vandroogenbroeck,Edgar Winter,Nik Turner,Vince Gill,Edgar Froese,Robby Krieger, Dav Koz,George Duke andZoot Horn Rollo. The record's credits attributed all its music to Sherwood and all its song texts to Shatner. Shatner's first venture into the country music genre,Why Not Me, appeared in August 2018, with a new partner in the form ofJeff Cook, best known as a founding member of the American bandAlabama. Released on the Heartland Records Nashville label, this album also included guest vocals byNeal McCoy,Home Free and Cash Creek.[96] A holiday collection,Shatner Claus, appeared in October 2018, with Shatner now aided and abetted byIggy Pop,Henry Rollins,Todd Rundgren,Billy Gibbons and others.[97] Shatner's ninth album,The Blues, was released on October 2, 2020,[98] and reached the number one slot of theBillboard Blues Chart fifteen days later.[99] A tenth album,Bill, was announced by Shatner on August 26, 2021, and released on September 24.[100][101]
As well as recording his own series of discs, Shatner has taken part in other artists' releases too.Ben Folds's 1998 albumFear of Pop: Volume 1 features Shatner on two tracks, "In Love" and "Still in Love". (Jamie Halliday, the founder ofAudio Antihero, named the former as his "favourite song of all time".)[102][103][104][105] On June 28, 2002, Shatner appeared with Brian Evans at the San Carlos Institute Theatre inKey West, Florida and duetted with him in the songs "What Kind of Fool Am I" and "The Lady Is a Tramp": the concert was later released as the albumBrian Evans Live with Special Guest: William Shatner. In 2005, he was heard in the track "'64 - Go" on theLemon Jelly album'64 - '95. And he provided the lead vocals on the progressive rock artistBen Craven's track "Spy In The Sky Part 3" in Craven's albumLast Chance To Hear, released in March 2016.[106] Among the music videos for other artists that featured him were one for Ben Folds's "Landed", in which he played the part of a producer, and two forBrad Paisley, one promoting "Celebrity" and the other "Online", with the latter containing ameta-reference in which Shatner appeared to be heartbroken when told that he could not sing.
Performances of songs on television and in films
Television audiences were introduced to Shatner's unorthodox musicianship not long afterStar Trek had made him famous. In 1978, while hosting thefifth presentation ofSaturn Awards bestowed by theAcademy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, he performed a version of Elton John'sRocket Man that went on to become a staple of comedic parody. In an episode ofDinah Shore's talk show,Dinah!, he used his appearance on it to performHarry Chapin's "Taxi". On June 9, 2005, he contributed his version of "My Way" to the presentation ofGeorge Lucas's AFI Life Achievement Award, backed by a chorus line of dancers inImperial Stormtrooper costumes who ended Shatner's segment by picking him up and carrying him offstage. On December 11, 2005, he launchedComedy Central'sLast Laugh 2005 with a skit in which he appeared as aLucifer celebrating how well the year had gone from the point of view of Hell. On March 29, 2006,TV Land aired a Shatner-centred episode of theirLiving in TV Land series subtitled "William Shatner in Concert". The program featured footage of him working with Ben Folds onHas Been, and included a sequence in which he performed with Folds's band and Joe Jackson; it climaxed with a defiant rendition of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" that was punctuated by himgiving the finger. To promote hisBiography Channel talk showShatner's Raw Nerve, he guest-hostedWorld Wrestling Entertainment's flagship showWWE Raw on February 1, 2010, and performed several wrestlers' entrance theme songs.[107] In the fourth episode of his sitcom$♯*! My Dad Says, his character, Ed Goodson, delivered a Shatner-styleKaraoke treatment ofRight Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy". In the same scene, a waitress asked Ed if he wanted to tackle "Rocket Man" and he answered "Not tonight!". On November 4, during a television appearance on theLopez Tonight show, he performed a cover ofCee Lo Green's song "F**k You".[108]
Several of the movies in which Shatner participated featured him in a musical context. In the closing scene ofFree Enterprise, he recited an oration ofMark Antony's fromJulius Caesar over a rap delivered by The Rated R, a duet listed in the movie's credits as "No Tears for Caesar". InMiss Congeniality, he performed the song "Miss United States", which was included in the movie's soundtrack album. He contributed the voice ofBuzz Lightyear to the Star Command anthem "To Infinity And Beyond" in the 2000 filmBuzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins.
In 2007, one of Shatner's albums,Has Been, was taken up by the writer and choreographerMargo Sappington (notable for her work onOh! Calcutta!) as the basis for a dance project,Common People, created for theMilwaukee Ballet. Shatner attended the premiere of the work and arranged for it to be filmed. The resulting feature documentary,William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet, was favourably received when it was unveiled at theNashville Film Festival on April 17, 2009.
In addition to treating songs with apparently serious intent, Shatner has sometimes offered performances which, like many passages from his memoirs, are exercises in self-mockery. Instances include his versions of the five nominees in the Best Song from a Movie category at the1992MTV Movie Awards. He also mined this vein of self-deprecating comedy as the lynchpin of Priceline's television advertising campaign. In one commercial for the company, he joined with his frequent collaboratorBen Folds in an ironic version of theDiana Ross hit "Do You Know Where You're Going To?".
Space career
Space ShuttleDiscovery
Ever since itsApollo 15 lunar mission,NASA has woken up its astronauts with specially tailored recordings. On March 7, 2011, the crew ofSTS-133 on theSpace ShuttleDiscovery began their last day docked to theInternational Space Station withAlexander Courage's title theme forStar Trek and Shatner reciting an adapted version of the show's famous introduction: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space ShuttleDiscovery. Her 30-year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before."[109]
2021 spaceflight
Shatner took part inBlue Origin's secondsub-orbitalhuman spaceflight,Blue Origin NS-18, on October 13, 2021.[110][111] Invited to join Chris Boshuizen,Glen de Vries andAudrey Powers on the trip by Blue Origin's creator, the entrepreneur and TrekkieJeff Bezos, he began his real-world visit to space at Blue Origin'sLaunch Site One in West Texas, travelling on theRSSFirst Step, aNew Shepardsuborbital rocket capsule. In a televised post-flight conversation with Bezos, Shatner articulated experiencing theoverview effect, a deepened understanding of the fact that the ecosphere of the Earth is but a thin, fragile skin enveloping its planet.[7] Aged90 years, 205 days, he became theoldest person to fly into space, surpassingWally Funk, who had flown on Blue Origin's first crewed spaceflight at the age of 82 in July 2021.[6][112] Minutes after the flight, he described experiencing theoverview effect,[115] emphasizing the extremely thin blue "blanket" of air covering Earth with the stark contrast of the "black ugliness" of space which appeared to be "death".[116]
Shatner's record was surpassed on May 19, 2024, by retiredU.S. Air Force pilotEd Dwight, who at the age of90 years, 253 days became the oldest person to fly into space.[117]
Shatner dislikes watching himself perform. He says that there are episodes of the originalStar Trek television show that he has never seen,[118] and he is just as averse to watching his performance inBoston Legal. He has claimed that the onlyStar Trek movie that he has screened is the one that he directed and so necessarily viewed when it was being edited,Star Trek V: The Final Frontier,[119] although in his 1993 bookStar Trek Memories, he recalls how disappointed he felt when he attended the premiere of the firstStar Trek movie,Robert Wise'sStar Trek: The Motion Picture.[120]: 201
Shatner is a longtime U.S. resident and has agreen card.[121]
Family
Shatner has been married four times. His first wife was a Canadian actress,[122] Gloria Rand (née Rabinowitz),[123] whom he married on August 12, 1956.[124][125] The couple had three daughters: Leslie (born 1958), Lisabeth (born 1961) andMelanie (born 1964). Shatner left Rand while acting inStar Trek: The Original Series, after which he divorced her in March 1969.[126][127][128]
Shatner's second wife was Marcy Lafferty, the daughter of the television producerPerry Lafferty. Lasting from 1973 to 1996, their marriage was Shatner's longest, but did not produce any children.[129]
Shatner's third wife was Nerine Kidd, whom he married in 1997. Returning home at around 10 p.m. on August 9, 1999, he found her lying lifeless at the bottom of their backyard swimming pool. She was forty years old. Once anautopsy had revealed that her blood contained both alcohol anddiazepam, the coroner decided that the cause of her death was accidental drowning and theLos Angeles Police Department, agreeing that there was no evidence of foul play, closed its file on the case. Speaking to the press shortly after his wife's death while visibly still in a state of shock, Shatner said that she had "meant everything" to him and described her as his "beautiful soulmate".[130] He urged the public to support Friendly House, a non-profit organization that helps women to rebuild their lives after trying to free themselves from alcoholism or other forms of drug addiction.[131] He later toldLarry King in an interview that "my wife, whom I loved dearly, and who loved me, was suffering with a disease that we don't like to talk about: alcoholism. And she met a tragic ending because of it".[130]
In his 2008 bookUp Till Now: The Autobiography, Shatner disclosed how Leonard Nimoy, himself no stranger to alcoholism, had done his best to try to avert the tragedy that Kidd's affliction threatened:
Leonard Nimoy's personal experience of alcoholism now came to play a central role in my life and it helped us bond together in a way I never could have imagined in the early days ofStar Trek. After Nerine and I had been to dinner with Leonard and Susan Nimoy one evening, Leonard called and said: "Bill, you know she's an alcoholic?" I said I did. I married Nerine in 1997, against the advice of many and my own good sense. But I thought she would give up alcohol for me. We had a celebration in Pasadena, and Leonard was my best man. I woke up about eight o'clock the next morning and Nerine was drunk. She was in rehab for 30 days three different times. Twice she almost drank herself to death. Leonard (sober many years) took Nerine toAlcoholics Anonymous meetings, but she did not want to quit.
In 2000, aReuters story reported that Shatner was planning to write and directThe Shiva Club, adark comedy about the grieving process inspired by his wife's death.[132] Shatner's 2004 albumHas Been included a spoken word piece, "What Have You Done", that describes his anguish upon discovering Nerine's body.
In 2001, Shatner married Elizabeth Anderson Martin. In 2004, she co-wrote the song "Together" on Shatner's albumHas Been.[133] Shatner filed for divorce from Elizabeth in 2019.[134] The divorce was finalized in January 2020.[135] Although Shatner and Martin remain divorced, as of 2025 they have reconciled and Shatner is once again referring to her as his wife.[136]
Relationships with other actors
Shatner first appeared on screen withLeonard Nimoy in 1964 when both actors guest-starred in an episode ofThe Man from U.N.C.L.E., "The Project Strigas Affair". Much like their characters onStar Trek, Shatner and Nimoy had a professional rivalry that developed into a close friendship. After the show's cancellation in 1969, they reunited inStar Trek: The Animated Series, and they also worked together on bothThe $20,000 Pyramid andT. J. Hooker. In 2016, Shatner revealed that despite their long and affectionate relationship, he and Nimoy had not spoken to each other in the five years before his death the year before.[137]
Nimoy spoke about their mutual rivalry during theStar Trek years:[138]
Bill's energy was very good for my performance, because Spock could then be the cool individual. Our chemistry was successful right from the start. [We were] very competitive, with a sibling rivalry up to here, and after the show had been on the air a few weeks and they started to get a lot of mail about Spock, then the dictum came down from NBC: "Oh, give us more of that guy! They love that guy!" Well, that can be a problem for a leading man who's hired as the star of the show.
On an episode of theA&E seriesBiography, where it was also divulged that Nimoy was Shatner's best man at his wedding with his fourth wife Elizabeth, Nimoy said, "Bill Shatner hogging the stage? No. Not the Bill Shatner I know." When Nimoy died in 2015, Shatner said, "I loved him like a brother. We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love." Although Shatner was unable to take part in Nimoy's funeral due to other commitments, his daughters attended in his place, and he celebrated his friend's life in an online memorial.
Shatner has been friends with actressHeather Locklear since 1982, when she began co-starring with him onT. J. Hooker. As she combined her work onHooker with a semi-regular role inDynasty—also anAaron Spelling production—she was asked byEntertainment Tonight whether she was finding her schedule difficult. She said that working with both Shatner and her experienced colleagues onDynasty could be daunting, but that her nervousness motivated her to turn up on set well prepared. AfterT.J. Hooker ended, Shatner helped her to get other roles, and after Nerine Shatner's death in 1999, she was solicitous in comforting him in his bereavement. They worked together again in 2005, when she appeared in two episodes ofBoston Legal as Kelly Nolan, a woman being tried for killing her much older, wealthy husband. The episodes' story involves Shatner's character becoming attracted to Nolan and trying to insert himself into her defence.[clarification needed] Asked how she came to be cast in the series, Locklear said, "I love the show. It's my favorite show, and I sorta kind of said, 'Shouldn't I be William Shatner's illegitimate daughter, or his love interest?'"
For years, some of Shatner'sStar Trek co-stars accused him of being difficult to work with, particularlyGeorge Takei,Walter Koenig, andJames Doohan. Shatner acknowledged the resentment that Koenig and Doohan felt towards him; inStar Trek Movie Memories, Shatner recalled having to work with them again while filming 1994'sStar Trek Generations:[139][140][141]
I was a lot more worried about working with Walter Koenig and Jimmy Doohan, two men who have made it clear on any number of occasions that my name is generally near the top of their shit lists.
Takei wrote about his issues with Shatner in his 2004 memoir,To the Stars. Interviewed in London in 2023, Takei made it clear that the passage of time had done nothing to assuage his hostility towards his former colleague: "Shatner is a cantankerous old fossil. All of us have had problems with him.... There is this fiction that Bill and Leonard [Nimoy] were good friends, but we know better—Leonard privately expressed his irritation with Bill. Bill is an egocentric, self-involved prima donna."[142] However, in 2025, Takei posted:Just days ago, Bill Shatner celebrated his 94th birthday — wishing him continued health and happiness. Live long and prosper, my friends.[143]
Koenig, on the other hand, accepted Shatner's invitation to appear on his interview seriesShatner's Raw Nerve in 2011 and made it clear that the animosity that he had once felt towards Shatner had long since dissipated. Doohan too achieved a warmer relationship with Shatner eventually, although it took a long time for the two men to build a rapport. In the 1990s, Shatner made numerous attempts to reconcile with Doohan without success.
James Doohan was the only formerStar Trek co-star who declined to be interviewed by Shatner for his first memoir,Star Trek Memories (1993). However, Doohan did contribute to Shatner's sequel, and anAssociated Press article published at the time of Doohan's final convention appearance in August 2004. At the time, Doohan was already suffering from severe health problems, and it was reported that he had forgiven Shatner, and the two actors had achieved the friendship as senior citizens that had eluded them as younger men.
Sky Conway, the organizer of the penultimate convention attended by Doohan, was a witness to Doohan and Shatner burying the hatchet. "At our show: 'The Great Bird of the Galaxy' at El Paso, Texas in November 2003, a celebration of Gene Roddenberry andStar Trek, Bill and Jimmy went on stage together. Behind the scenes and before they went on stage, they hugged each other, apologized and expressed their love and admiration for each other. Bill specifically asked me to get them together so he could make amends and clear the air between the two of them before it was too late."[144]
Health
Shatner began suffering fromtinnitus, a hearing disorder. Researchers think that tinnitus can be triggered by exposure to very loud noise, and Shatner believes that his falling prey to it might be the result of apyrotechnical accident that happened during the shooting of the 1967Star Trek episode "Arena". His condition has been ameliorated byhabituation therapy that involved his wearing an earpiece delivering low-levelwhite noise which "helped his brain put the tinnitus in the background". He is a supporter of a tinnitus charity, theAmerican Tinnitus Association.[145]
Shatner revealed in 2020 that he suffers from swollen joints and various age-related "aches and pains". He treats his discomfort withcannabidiol oil, a dietary supplement extracted fromcannabis.[146]
In his spare time, Shatner enjoys breeding andshowingAmerican Saddlebreds[25] andQuarter Horses.[147] He rode one of his own mares, Great Belles of Fire, inStar Trek Generations.[148] He has a 360-acre (150 ha) farm nearVersailles, Kentucky, namedBelle Reve Farm (from the Frenchbeau rêve, "Beautiful Dream" – Belle Reve was the name of Blanche Dubois' and her sister Stella's family home inA Streetcar Named Desire), where he raises American Saddlebreds. Three of his notable horses are Call Me Ringo, Revival, and Sultan's Great Day.
Shatner participates in the Hollywood Home Games of theWorld Poker Tour, in which celebrities try to win money for their favourite charities.[151] But most of his philanthropic work is associated with his love of horses. Since 1990, he has been one of the most important supporters of the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, which raises money for organizations serving children,[152][153] and his horse farm works with the Central Kentucky Riding for Hope "Horses for Heroes" program.[154]
In 2006, Shatner sold akidney stone that had been surgically extracted from him to the online auction companyGoldenPalace.com for $25,000, after rejecting an earlier bid of $15,000 with the observation that collectors had paid more than $100,000 for one of hisStar Trek tunics.[155][156] In an appearance onThe View on May 16, 2006, he said that the proceeds of the sale and an additional $20,000 raised from the cast and crew ofBoston Legal had been donated to the housing charityHabitat for Humanity.
Public appearances
Shatner was king of theMardi GrasBacchus parade in 1987.[157] On New Year's Day 1994, Shatner was theGrand Marshal of theTournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California. Instead of leading the event in the customary classic car, he presided over it from horseback. He also took part in the coin toss before the subsequent80th Rose Bowl college football game (the teams vying for Rose Bowl honours that year were the University of Wisconsin Badgers and the University of California Los Angeles Bruins; the Badgers beat the Bruins by 21–16).
Shatner was one of several speakers at theclosing ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, on February 28, 2010. In 2014, he discharged the duties of a Grand Marshal again at the 102ndCalgary Stampede parade in his native Canada.[158][159][160]
Many of Shatner's public appearances reflect Captain Kirk's status as one of science fiction's best known icons. In September 2016, for example, the organizers of theSalt Lake Comic Con invited him to attend their event as their special guest.[161] In 2017, he acted as the honorary captain of a ship hosting "Star Trek: The Cruise", the firstStar Trek cruise that CBS Productions licensed, an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first broadcast ofStar Trek's original pilot episode.[162] Shatner was dismayed that the cruise offered its customers an opportunity to swim with dolphins, and petitioned the CEO of the Norwegian Cruise Line throughPETA not to include dolphins in the programme of their 2018 cruise: "The exploitation of any species for profit and entertainment would have violated thePrime Directive."[163] Among the many other Kirk-related dates in his diary were visits to the replicaStar Trek: The Original Series set built byJames Cawley inTiconderoga, New York, which saw him guiding small groups of Trekkies on tours of Cawley's version of theEnterprise,[164][165]and a December 4, 2022, star guest beam-down to theL.A. Comic Con.[166]
Social media controversies
In 2017, Shatnertweeted support forAutism Speaks, a controversial charity disliked by some autism self-advocates. He spent the next few days arguing with autistic people and allies, including citinganti-vaccination websiteNaturalNews. Days later, Shatner suggested his critics should have kept quiet, eventually calling the episode a misunderstanding.[167][168]
In 2020, again on Twitter, he argued with other Twitter users for over a month about being called a "straight whitecis man".[169][170]
In 2021,The Forward noted that he was dismissive of aJewish convert of colour, comparing the incident to his arguments about the term "cis" and Autism Speaks.[171]
However, in 2023Brent Spiner stated in an interview on theInside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast that Shatner had informed him his Twitter (now X) account was managed by an employee, and that Shatner had minimal direct involvement in the account's content.[172][173]
Shatner has starred in movies and television shows for seven decades. He has also appeared in video games, primarily as James T. Kirk, as well as a number of commercials.
Isaac Asimov - Foundation: the Psychohistorians (1975) -Caedmon Records
William Shatner Live (1977) – live double album – Lemli Records (reissued the following year byImperial House asCaptain of the Starship – William Shatner Live!)
Spaced Out: The Very Best of Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner (1996) – compilation album –Universal (Includes 7 tracks fromThe Transformed Man + 17 tracks byLeonard Nimoy)
^Shatner, William; Fisher, David (2016).Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man (1st ed.). New York:Thomas Dunne Books,St. Martin's Press. p. 7.ISBN978-1-250-08331-9. Shatner writes: "... my grandparents were from Ukraine, Lithuania, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire."
^"Jewish Vilkaviskis (Facebook)".Archived from the original on August 31, 2017. RetrievedJune 22, 2017. Contains information (and link to June 13, 2017, Lithuanian newspaper article) regarding Shatner's visit toVilkaviskis, Lithuania, his maternal grandparents' birthplace.
^Sparborth, Christian Höhne (September 5, 2001)."Nichols Talks First Inter-Racial Kiss".TrekToday. Utrecht, Netherlands: Christian Höhne Sparborth.Archived from the original on February 29, 2012. RetrievedAugust 31, 2011.
^Kricfalusi, John."John K Interview".TVparty! (Interview). Interviewed by Zachary Houle. Greensboro, NC: William Ingram.Archived from the original on June 29, 2009. RetrievedSeptember 13, 2009.
^abFisher, Kristin (December 10, 2021)."First on CNN: The US gives Bezos, Branson and Shatner their astronaut wings".CNN.Archived from the original on December 10, 2021. RetrievedDecember 10, 2021.The US government is making it official, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and William Shatner have earned the title of astronaut after their flights to the edge of space. The Federal Aviation Administration will also award Commercial Space Astronaut Wings to 12 other people who have flown at least 50 miles above Earth on a FAA licensed commercial spacecraft, including the crew of SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission. The FAA will award wings to eight people who flew on Blue Origin's New Shepherd spacecraft, three who flew on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and to the four members of the SpaceX crew who spent three days in space in September.
^"Watch William Shatner's first remarks back on Earth". CNET Highlights (viaYouTube). October 13, 2021. RetrievedOctober 11, 2025quote: "The covering of blue, this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us... and then suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, as though you whip off a sheet off you when you're asleep, and you're looking into blackness, intoblack ugliness, and you look down. There's the blue down there (pointing down), and the black up there (pointing up), and it's... It's just... (pointing down) There is mother, and Earth, and comfort. (pointing up) And there is... Isthere death? I don't know! Is that death? Is that the way death is? Whup! And it's gone. Jesus. It was so moving to me. This experience, it's something unbelievable."{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
^Michael Seth Starr (2019). "6".Shatner. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 71–72.ISBN978-1-4930-5065-9.Archived from the original on March 5, 2021. RetrievedMay 8, 2020.
^"CKRH Home Page".Central Kentucky Riding for Hope. Lexington, KY: Neil Tollner.Archived from the original on November 12, 2013. RetrievedNovember 12, 2013.
"William Shatner and the Fromage Frontier", eight-page interview by Claire Connors, seven photos includingcover by Jeff Lipsky.Cheese Connoisseur, summer 2013, cover story, pages 26–33. Published by Phoenix Media Network, Inc., Boca Raton, Florida. Shatner discusses his career, health, current and future projects, and, especially, his appreciation of cheese.
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