1970 - The Great Impersonator

"If you live on your gross, you are dead", Leonard explains. He's giving interviews on a nearly daily basis and busy with his tax. "I used to think - any guy who has a television series for five years and is not fixed for life - he gets no sympathy from me. Now I know it is a treacherous existence."

"After 17 years of living hand to mouth a tremendous drive builds up inside you for a secure future. I want to have enough money so I am never again at the mercy of the first script that comes along."

Because he never could have pets in the tenement where he was raised in Boston, he and his family now have an Australian terrier, a cat, rats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and tropical fish. Once, in 1956, his career going nowhere, Leonard took all his savings ($70) and bought a tropical fish tank. At present he co-owns a pet shop in the San Fernando Valley called: "Leonard Nimoy's Pet Pad". "Come in and be petted" is the slogan.

Summarizing past and present he says: "From 1949 to 1966 I made a living, now I have a meaningful career." Leonard says he feels "... loose and flexible. I'm trying to rid myself of old hang-ups. I've always been rigid about time." Inefficiency riles him. 

Q: "How does an actor convince an audience he doesn't need pointy ears?"
LN: "I play different characters every week. This week I'm an Romanian. (Referring to M:I )Next week I'm an Australian. In one episode I use four different voices in one phone conversation. In another I impersonate a man who has lost his memory, a man with no identity. In a three-parter I play a magician. I step out of a limousine, wearing a cape, a falcon sits on my wrist. How can you beat that for an entrance?"  The IMF work is invigorating.

In the beginning that was the situation with Star Trek. "I'm having a ball he said in 1966. By the third season the ball was over. "I had aged 10 years. I needed a rest. I felt burned out, trapped. ....  Leonard drinks milk with his lunch and Sandi explains that he has an ulcer. "I hate to talk about myself", Leonard says. "I hate it."

Don Hanley, a friend, who handles the business arrangements for LN's Dot recordings: "I once studied acting under Leonard. Teaching turned Leonard into a god figure. When an actor did a part, it was important that the other students like it. But what really mattered was when god extended his hand, when god nodded his approval. We waited for Leonard's nod." 

Leonard also taught at Synanon, an institution where drug users are rehabilitated and Leonard reveals: "If I wasn't an actor, I'd really liked to be a psychiatrist."

IN an early age he decided to go for character roles, patterning himself after the late great Paul Muni and immersed himself in Stanislavsky's book "Building a Character". About "Kid Monk Baroni" he says: ...it was the kind of production that takes stars and makes unknowns out of them."

After "Deathwatch" in 1960, which made no money but made people notice Leonard Nimoy, he started working regularly as an actor, but always is involved in social issues participating in marches or rallies.  

When he notices prejudice in himself he recalls: "I've got to realize other lifestyles exist, other life goals, and they are just as good to the people who live them as my life style and life goals are to me." What are Leonard's life styles and  goals? "The sun is important to me, my children, my wife and home. Mental health, man's dignity, the essence of existence without repression, without slave labor. I could go on and on. Any of them is a chapter heading."

He just had flown in from LA to London and had to decide whether to accept an offer from CBS, a special about the great musician Woody Guthrie or to appear on Broadway again... or: to be ready for an eventual Third Star Trek movie.

"There has been a bit of bad Press about how I didn't want to do the second film which isn't accurate at all. I have always enjoyed my Star trek work. It's a futuristic show with hope and I find that there are also quite a few interesting human, scientific, philosophical and astronautical ideas," says Nimoy and talks about the interests he encounters in conventions.

 Spock's interest in love: "This Side of Paradise". Leonard remembers a scene ending with Jill Ireland whispering: "I don't even know your first name" and him replying: "My dear, you wouldn't be able to pronounce it." "It was great", Leonard adds.

In the fifties he played parts in various films, in the sixties he had parts and leading roles in all major series and became famous by playing in Star Trek.

Soon Leonard Nimoy managed to work in every level of the acting business. Examples of stage, documentaries, writing, directing, producing a. o. follow.

About "Vincent": "I'd like to take this show around the world now I have some free time. Time has been at such a premium these last few years.  ... I bought two planes and I didn't fly enough to keep my flying time above the limit... if I find a tasty piece of work that seems a challenge I just can't say no."

His current challenge, the series "In Search Of... " embodies his sharp interest in things supernatural and technologies alternative.

"The program that made the most impression on me so far is the one on acupuncture...", then Leonard explains that he was invited to a hospital to watch a person having her brain tumour removed. The narcosis was done by acupuncture. Three needles were stuck in the person's head and she was talking during the operation. "That made me realize how little we know about these things, and just how fascinating it can be investigating them."