Introduction of Leonard Nimoy as actor, producer and director
by Carol Hermann in his office in Beverly Hills.

What was your name at birth?
Same, Leonard Nimoy.

Any nicknames?
Lenny, Dimple. (laughing)

Right from the start?
Yes.

Where were you born?
Born in Boston 1931, March 1931

Is that where you grew up?
I grew up there, left when I was 18.

What was your father's name?
Max.

What did he do?
Barber. My mother was a housewife.

What was her name?
Dora.

Do you have any sisters or brothers?
I have one brother, Melvin, 5 years older than me. He is a straight guy in the family. He did all the things I was supposed to do. He's got a college degree, went to work, had a very fine career as a chemical engineer. 

Your parents were immigrants. Where were they from?
Russia.

How did that effect your growing up?
I think it added to my life in a cultural kind of way, gave me another dimension, gave me a sense of geography, history, sense of identity that perhaps added a dimension to my life. I found it enriching. I actually went back to Russia about 15 years ago with my wife to the village my parents came from – a thrilling experience.  

Tell me about your early influences, your family life.
I grew up in the inner city of Boston. It was a tenement neighborhood. A three or four storey attached tenement building. It was mostly immigrant. I would say about 70% Italian, about 25% Jewish, the rest a mix of some Irish, some Poles and a few Blacks. I would say a rather peaceful neighborhood; people were living comfortably with each other, not much trouble. There were a lot of shopkeepers who dealt with Italian clientele; there were shopkeepers who dealt with Jewish clientele. My parents were Jewish. We lived with my grandparents, I said "we", my brother and I, lived with my parents and my grandparents in one apartments. And my father's barber shop was only a block from where we lived, so he walked to work. His shop was about two or three minutes away. He came back for lunch unless it was a very busy day, in which case somebody would bring him his lunch in a paper bag. He'd eat his sandwich while cutting hair or shaving people.  

And the primary grade school which we attended was immediately across the street. So, we literally walked about 20 feet and we were at the school, my brother and I. And then, after the first three grades we moved to another school which wasn't much further away, about three blocks.  Four or Five minute walk from home.

Was your family religious?
Somewhat. somewhat. The apartment was kept kosher. My grandmother was rather strict about that. So, there were different sets of dishes for dairy and meat, the traditional way of keeper a kosher house. So we were observant about that. I was bar-mizvahed, my brother was bar-mizvahed. There was a synagogue close by, I actually sang in the synagogue choir when I was ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
I behaved well, I didn't cause trouble in school. Teachers liked me because I wasn't any trouble. I did well until my teenage years. ...
I realized now that I wasn't very interested in studies, I didn't want to do a lot of homework, I wanted to do things. I wanted to be at the local clubs. We had clubs in the settlement house. I wanted to hang out with kids who wanted to do things, make things or participate in some kind of activity, be part of a circus, be a clown in a circus or that kind of stuff. And I would stop of the homework.

Was that when you started your interest in performing?
I actually started performing when I was eight. There was a neighborhood settlement house that had a little theater. It was called the Elisabeth Peabody Playhouse within they had an appealing playhouse, lovely little theatre, 375 seats, classic theatre with balconies upstairs, a wonderful stage. And they had a program of theatre for children and for adults. They did an annual Gilbert O'Sullivan Umbrella, a wonderful production I remember seeing. I was about ten years old, I thought that was amazing. And I started acting, my first time on stage, when I was cast as Hansel in a production of Hansel and Gretel.

Was that what you wanted to do?
I was counseled to doing it. I didn't go to them and say: I want to be on the stage. I used to hang around there after school and somebody asked me to come into a room where a lady was who asked me to sing something. "What song do you know?". I sang God bless America or something. I sang and I was cast as part of the production. I could memorize and I could sing. I was comfortable with it; I didn't think about why I am doing it, it was just something that I did. Until I was 13 or 14 I did several children's theatre. I did well at school in the English classes because I could memorize and I was good with the language. 

What did you want to be when you grew up?
I didn't have a clue, I didn't have a clue where my intentions were going
until I was about 17, then I got the call (laughing).
Then I knew exactly what to do.

Before that you were interested in radio.
I did some radio work, high school radio work and charity organization that had some programs in Boston at the time, bible stories and that kind of thing that kids were asked to do.  Boston, my memory of Boston at that time was that there was a great concern about helping people leading a better life than before, a lot of programs. There was a big immigrant society. So a lot of it had to deal with learning how to cope with being a new person in a new land and New England in general had that kind of atmosphere because there was still a lot of sense pilgrims in that area, as I was growing up there was a sense of new settlers coming in.
We, my family were the new settlers coming from Eastern Europe instead of coming from England. So, there was a lot of program with helping people to integrate in a society. There were radio shows dealing with those issues and I would be cast because I was comfortable doing it.

Were there any shows you liked to listen to at that time?
Yu, I remember The Shadow "Who knows evil works in the hearts of men?" Orson Wells, I remember The Lone ranger was a big deal, on radio, big deal... I love a lot of mystery... Little Orphan Annie big stuff.

Do you remember World War II, how did it affect your family?
I remember Pearl Harbor Day vividly. I was ten years old and my brother and I had a newspaper out on Beakon Hill. And on Sundays we would get some extra newspapers and we would walk on Boston common in the afternoon selling the papers and we typically would pick some 25 newspapers from the office ... and we would pay a paper for a penny and would sell it for two or three cents at that time. On this particular day, December 41, we would do the same as we did every Sunday, yelling the headline in Boston common. The headline was something about "Japs attack Pearl Harbor". I didn't have a clue what it meant, I did what I do every Sunday, I yelled the headline. And for some reason people were buying the paper more rapidly than they would normally do. We were pretty excited. We thought "Big day", we‘ll get back to get some more papers. It was a profit mood, mainly. (laughing). We went back trying to get more papers and couldn't. They were all sold out. So, we sensed it was some kind of event happening.
Then we heard President Roosevelt on the radio, that very famous speech, "Today, ..." talking about World War. So, because I was a newsboy, delivering papers every day and eventually selling these papers on corners around the city of Boston after school and on Sundays, I was much in touch with the headlines, very conscious about what was going on in Europe and the far East.

What high school did you attend?
Boston English High. I went to Boston Latin school for a couple of years. My brother graduated after 6 years, I followed him into Boston Latin. The demands, the academic demands were much more than I was going to deal with. So, I went back to Boston English after 2 years, where I could relax. A lot less homework.

Now, you said earlier when you were 17, ... would you like to talk about that?
There was a director who came into the neighborhood, his name was Boris Segal. Boris was a Harward Law student at the time and he had worked out a deal with the Elisabeth Peabody House that I mentioned earlier where they gave him one of the guestrooms to live in and he could take his meals there and in return he directed some plays. ...  He did a Checkov play and something else, a J.B. Preesly play. Then someone said he's casting a play called Awake and Sing and he's looking for somebody like you they said, a teenager, to play the role of the son of the family. So, I went met him, did some reading with him, got the role and became inflamed with the idea of becoming an actor. This was my first time doing an adult play. All the stuff I had done previously was children's theatre. I got very, very turned on to the idea of doing this kind of work for the rest of my life.

Did you work with him later?
In television, yu, and on stage again in Los Angeles. He came to California. He gave up the idea of practicing law, studying law, he went to Yale, went to Yale school and theatre, Yale drama school. I left for California shortly after we did the play, the Awake and Sing, I went to California, to study acting at the Pasadena Play House. And he and I rediscovered each other a few months later. He actually went to work for a while at ZIV television, he was there as a story editor, and then, later, he became a director. His first directing job was at the Pasadena Playhouse. I was out of the school by then. He directed a production of Stalag 17 in which I acted for him, and then, eventually he began directing at Matinee Theatre and I acted for him... We remained friends for quite some time and then he eventually he died in a helicopter accident.

At the Pasadena Playhouse what do you think the most important things you learned?
A very disappointing experience for me. I went there in 1949. I was 18, I have been acting since I was eight, this was a post war student body and the school that had great reputation in the thirties and early forties, was now almost finished. I didn't realize until I got there. I had come across the country on a $100 coach seat on a train. It had been a great adventure coming to California to become an actor, maybe get into the movies.

When I got to the school I discovered that most of the student body weren't very serious. I was very serious, probably too serious for a young kid at the time. I was obsessed with the idea of doing good work.
And I had an immediate negative experience because I had acted in a production of a play called John loves Mary, a light comedy directed by Elliot Silverstein. .. When I came to the school in Pasadena, I discovered first that you couldn't act on a main stage until you were at least a third year student. And they were running a production of John Loves Mary in which there were a number of performances by third year students of the Playhouse. I was convinced that the productions we have done in Boston were better than the one I saw on the stage of the Pasadena Playhouse. So, I became disillusioned. 
I thought have to study here three years in order to do this level of work and I already was involved with better work in Boston. So, I left there after about 6 months and the school closed after about another year or two. I guess what I learned or at least I decided was getting a certificate or a degree of some kind was not the most important issue. The most important issue was experience. I had to make a living, too. So, I left.
 

So, what did you do after you left?
I contacted a lady named Ruth Roman who was from my neighborhood at the West End. I had never known her but she had recently starred in a movie with Kirk Douglas and ... I contacted her and left a message that I was from the West End and now was in California, in Los Angeles. And she responded. She invited me to come to the studio. I met her and she was helpful. I said I am leaving Pasadena coming here to Hollywood. And she had lived in a rooming house that catered to young actors. And she took me there and introduced me to a lady who ran the house and I moved in there. It was at the Sunset Strip. This was round spring of 1950.
So I was immediately put in touch with people who were looking for acting jobs and in some sort I became part of their community and became trudging up and down Sunset Boulevard where most of the agencies were offering them black and white glossies for agents who might help me find work. There wasn't much work, it took a long time. I took a job at an ice cream parlor to support myself.

You worked in a few films.
Actually, it was through the work at the ice cream parlor on Sunset Strip that I was introduced to my first job. A young guy working there had some relationship with somebody who is on the Pinky Lee Show and they offered him a job. For some reason he couldn't or wouldn't take it. He told me about it and I went and got the job.
Pinky Lee was a diminutive guy who wore a funny cap and did kind of a dancing thing and a song that opened the show. It said "Hello, Hallo, my name is Pinky Lee", it was a kid show. A song and dance stuff. It was life, life television. And they also did sketches, comedy sketches that would last three or four or five minutes. So, there was a sketch which was classic, burlesque comedy ... a forerunner of Jerry Lewis if you like to imagine that. And the sketch was about mistaken identity. The crooks, the really bad guys were looking for some money that has been stolen, thinking that he's got it. So, we are chasing him. I became one of these bad guys. We are chasing Pinky. And he doesn't have it. We think he does and are going to get hold of him and interrogate him in a very tough way.

My character was called Knuckles and the reason why he was called Knuckles was because he was constantly cracking his knuckles. There was a guy off camera who had these little boxes made of very thin wood in which you'd buy strawberries. And I time I did that (pretending to crush his knuckles) he would crunch them, that wood into the microphone. We rehearsed for four days – there was no actor's union covering television at the time – and did the performance on the fourth night. I think it was an hour show, and I was paid $15. Very excitable, my first paying job.

Was this your first job for television?
Yu. 

Let's go back. When was the first time you actually saw television?
... I think in that rooming house that I moved into in 1950 if this makes sense. I don't think I was exposed to any television before that. This is my first memory of television, sitting with people in front of the TV set and watching TV shows.

Do you remember what show it was?
I remember we watched Milton Berle, we watched the Red Button Show, which was on the air, it was a life Saturday Night show, mostly comics and sketches.

Did you see a future for yourself in television?
No, ... no, not immediately because there were no dramas being done, really at the time. Or very little which looked like something I could do. They daytime stuff was mostly hours of people talking to the camera of various things and playing records. They would be like disc jockeys on television. And the camera would zoom in on the turntable and you watch the record spin around as you listened to the song. And when the song was over the camera would pull back. (laughing) They start talking again and eventually they play another record and the camera would zoom in again. And then some time later they started doing videos of those things. I didn't realize then that there was a tremendous opportunity for the work I wanted to do.

As a theatre actor was there an opportunity of work for television?
No, not that I was conscious of. I did act in plays around L A, I believed strongly that I needed the experience and the exposure what acting in plays would give me because I was hoping for work in films and eventually in television, but in that time in 1949, 1950 I wasn't thinking of television as a career. I was hoping to get a contract with a movie studio, to work in some movies.

But you did work in some films?
Eventually I had work in some small roles. The work I was useful for when I was hired, which was rare those days, because I had trouble getting work, the roles I was cast in were always off beat, nasty guys, ethnic characters who beat up people, who were always in trouble. The good guys were guys who look like Tab Hunter. The look at that time was a look that wasn't me. I was off beat. Small eyes, crocked nose. "no, no, no! Next, next!" I became useful eventually playing heavies.

What shows were those?
After the Pinky Lee show, the earliest shows,... the next show I think was Lights, Camera, Action. It was a kind of talent exposure show. The idea was to give young people a chance to perform, to get some exposure, some experience. It didn't pay. Warren Drummond was one of the directors, the producer of the show, he became a very fine director in television and films.


So, you go to an audition, and eventually, if they would bring you on a show, which they did in my case, you get to do original piece of material; maybe a tree or four minute sketch with an actor or actress. And there would be a panel of judges. The judges would pick a winner. I don't know what the winner actually got, maybe an appointment at one of the studios to be cast. I didn't win. I was given a script that had to do with a guy who was – it was a very dark piece of material – in the basement of my home digging with a shovel, and down comes the woman who does not realize I am digging a hole for her. Charming piece of work. The performer who won the contest on that particular show was a singer, he did a piece of Broadway music or something.

You also worked on Matinee Theatre?
Yes, Matinee Theatre was a big event for actors. It was a daily life dramatic show, 1 hour each day. I think it went out at noon every day. So, it was a constant turnover, a talent eater. There would typically be a named star or two and there would be work for other people. The process s would be for example: If you would be on a Friday show, you'd rehearse Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and on Friday you'd be on the show – life. A skillful organized operation... So, you always had five shows on rehearsal in various studios on NBC. And it worked. By this time there was a union as I recall, an actor's union for television. And they had established a pay scale whereby you would get a certain fee. The fee was predetermined, there was no negotiation. You would get a certain fee if you had an under five line of dialogue. And then another scale that was over five line dialogue. I was hired twice, first by Boris Segal, I worked with him in Boston, Stalag 17. He hired me for an under five line role in a show that starred Vincent Price. Vincent Price, wonderful guy.

It was a show, a story, which would go around his menacing persona. He was about to kill his wife. (laughing). He had arranged a wire on his telephone. If the telephone rang, it would give off a spark and he somehow managed to fill the house with gas. He would go off some place and telephone his wife and before she could get to the phone the whole place would blow up. I had a very small role.

I remember coming to the back door of his house, back door, for a delivery of some kind while he was in the process of setting the whole thing up. He was very nervous, opening the door only a smidgeon.

"Oh, I've got your milk, Mr. ... Is everything o.k.?" "Yeah, everything is o.k." and I left.

Boris was doing me a favor, I needed the work. And I was hired for another episode... with another director for a 105 line role and I rehearsed for a day or two. I could sense the director was uneasy about what I was doing and wasn't quite happy. On the third day I went home and I got a message not to come back to work the next morning.  It was devastating, absolutely devastating. I came over it.

What were the challenges in your television work?
I found the work I was doing on life television very difficult because I was given very small roles. I wasn't playing a role where I could get some sense of a rhythm and some sense of a character. I was doing tiny little bits of pieces. And I remember thinking at the time that it was more difficult to do a one line or two, three line role than to do pages of dialogue. With pages of dialogue you get invested in the dialogue, invested in the story and establish yourself somehow and be rehearsing more. I'd be waiting for hours until it came to my two or three lines. I would be nervous and feel I wasn't having enough time to get comfortable. It was difficult.

Did you witness any mishaps?
I don't think I was ever involved in a situation like that. I remember there was a big to do when Cliff Bridges, I worked with him a lot in the Sea Hunt show later, was involved in a life show where he was confronting a mob and in the course of the action, during the performance he swore at them. I don't know exactly what he said, he called them "sons of bitches" or so. Oh, a big to do, he swore at life television!
And once in a while watching television you would see some funny little thing happen. You would see on a show like Matinee Theatre a scene finishing and the camera come up with another set and the actor coming up with another prop man. "Stop, cut!" That kind of thing would have happened I think. (laughing)

Let's talk about some of the series you appeared on. Let's talk about West Point
West Point was a ZIV show. ZIV was syndicated, one of the early syndicated television shows. They would produce the show and then sell it at various markets. I mean: Network show. ... It was an unusual job for me because as I said the most characters I was hired for were off beat characters. I was playing Latinos, I was playing Indians, I was playing dark, brutal characters and the West Point job was a young boxer who was a student at West Point. I don't remember exactly what the story was about, but to be a West Point cadet was an unusual casting for me. ... John Beradino who did a lot of soap opera work played my brother at that show.
And we actually went to West Point which was a big deal because most of the ZIV productions was shot at very, very, very low budget: Highway Patrol, Harbour Control, Sea Hunt, Rough Riders, McKenzie's Raiders, they were all done around LA within minutes of the studio. So, to be put on a plane and be flown away to a far location like that was a big deal. I can place the boxer story because my son Adam was born in August 1956. He was born while I was in West Point doing that episode.

Another episode you did was Sea Hunt..
I did several Sea Hunts, at least six or seven. It was a show that was more relaxed about reusing people, reusing actors. A lot of shows were very finicky about it: "Oh, no, he already did a show for us, he can't go again because of the credibility." They were more relaxed about that. And because I was considered a character actor, I'd do one with a mustache, I'd do one with a hat, I would disguise myself in various ways they often wanted accents, so I would do an accent. So I was useful. I did a lot of work with Lloyd Bridges whom I admired a lot, a terrific guy, a very good actor. Those shows were eh, the very first, the very earliest shows I did for ZIV were typically two days show, a half hour show shot in two days. We would one day outside one day and one day inside, one day on location, very close to the studio, and one day inside. Sea Hunt was a little bit more extravagant. They had better budgets. And they'd pay you a little bit more. For example I did a Highway Patrol, I got $80, no negotiation. You don't want to get the job, next please, somebody else. You got the job you worked for $ 80, two days. Sea Hunt paid maybe $ 100 a day. And typically they would do two shows in 5 days. They would sometimes hire you for two shows paying you $ 500, you do two episodes.

Was there any stigma ...?
If there was any stigma it didn't matter to me. I was on the hold out for a network show. A job is a job. I was delighted to work for ZIV and there was a time they called me every three or four weeks. I needed the job, I had to sustain a family at this time. We talking about '56, '57, I had two kids.

Another show was the Wagon Train
Wagon Train was a very important event for me. I think there were two or three I did. The one which was terribly important for me was show whish starred Marty Terry Bordenau and I played his son. We got on well, he was very helpful. He was already an Academy Award winner. .. He evidently liked what I did, the studio, I think it was Universal, called me back several times after Wagon Train for other shows, and it really gave me some new momentum. I started to make a living with more money. It was a larger role than I had been playing previously, more dramatic, more opportunity, Marty Terry Bordenau was helpful, we developed a good relationship and kind of he guided me along at some spots, how to deal with the character of the plot. It worked out well for me.

You remember the storyline?
The story was: We were Basks, sheep herders. I had a brother, who was a bad guy and who was steeling some of the family sheep and selling them or something. And I had a confrontation with him and killed him. So, there was this terrible blood of a brother on my hands, very sad and tragic story.
Oh, I did one with ... in which I played a Mexican, a Mexican story.

Why did you do ethnic characters?
We were in a period where actors like myself were hired to play ethnic characters. Not like today, where ethnic characters are played by ethnic actors, fair enough. Often I would be cast to play Mexicans or whatever along with the actors who were Mexicans or Latinos and I would be guided by their rhythm and their sound and I guess I was a chameleon like, I would find my way into a comfort zone with them, they were helpful. Eventually they could assert themselves and say, why should we help this guy to play those roles, they'd probably be right.

Did you feel animosities?
Not at that time, no. Not that I was conscious of.

Another series you played on was Bonanza. Anything interesting to share?
On Bonanza, I think I played on it one or three times, the one I remember I played a slick character with a girlfriend, a con man, brocket suit west, cigarette, a cool, he thought he was cool kind of guy, not very, very cool. I did Bonanza much, much, much later for television, just about 5 or 6 years ago, a Bonanza movie television revival which was fun to do. I played Frank James, Jesse James brother alongside Ben Johnson who was a hero, a great Western actor, we had a great time together. I really enjoyed working with him. Ben Johnson came out of stables, literally, he was a horse rider on Western Republic, where some low price Westerns were made in the 40ies and 50ies. Sunset Carson and people like that. And John Wayne. And he wrangled horses. That was his job to get the horses ready for the cowboys and then doing stunts occasionally.

And then John Ford started to give him acting jobs. So he became an actor, a very good one, an Academy Award winner. (laughing) He had great stories about the old days and the early Westerns. He had a joke for everything, he had a final line for everything. One day we had a scene, sitting side by side at a campfire, plain old buddies talk about the old days, the camera was about to roll and the director said: Ben, closer to Leonard, please, and he said: I'd rather cozy up to wet dog. (laughing) He was a funny guy.

Another Western you played in was Rawhide.
Yu, I played an Indian. That's about the only thing I remember. I wish to talk about the early days of syndication with ZIV. The process of syndication was such that the makers of the shows never knew the sponsors of the show. Later on the networks shows were done for specific sponsors. Bonanza was sponsored by soandso. Rawhide was sponsored by such and such.
They never knew who the sponsors were going to be. Very often cigarette companies or food companies or whatever. There was a lot of cigarette advertising at the time. As a result if you were playing a heavy in a ZIV Western or a ZIV show, you were not allowed to smoke in character, the character was not allowed to smoke because cigarette sponsors were concerned about potential cigarette smokers, they did not want bad guys smoking in their shows. Only the heroes could smoke. They did not want bad guys being identified with smoking. There was that kind of commercial control.

Are more roles like that coming to mind?
There may have been, I can't honestly say they come to mind. But that was a shock. One day I was playing a heavy in one of the Westerns and I got one of these brown cigarettes appropriate for the time, "no, no, no, no! Heavies don't smoke!" ...

Another show was Gunsmoke.
Yeah. Again a show that I worked on more than once. What was particularly interesting is that Gunsmoke was the last job I was doing before I was shooting Star Trek. I had already done the Star Trek pilot. And I was hired for this story, playing an Indian, the show was called The Treasure of John Walking Fox. I played John Walking Fox. It was nicely written.

As I recall it was about an Indian trapper, very good friends with a white man who also did the same, so they were trapping together. His buddy, the white man, comes into town to sell his furs, there's a confrontation with the dealer who's supposed to buy the furs. And this broker or dealer kills the guy and there wasn't to be justice for this friend of John Walking Fox. And John Walking Fox comes to town and starts to drop gold coins at various business establishments. First he pays for his friend's funeral with a gold coin and then checks into the hotel and drops a gold coin. Word goes around  town there's an Indian who drops gold.
Somehow he gets the word spread around that there's a cachet of gold out there in the woods. And he gets these opposing forces, one of them is the guy who's killed his friend, beating up each other trying to find the gold. And eventually the guy who's killed his friend gets killed in a gunfight between the bad guys trying to find John Walking Foxes supposed treasure. There is no treasure. So it is kind of a rye way to get social justice and John Walking Fox leaves without ever revealing was there ever a treasure or wasn't there.

Did you work closer with James Arness?
Yeah. I knew Jim before Gunsmoke in fact before I left the service in December 1953. There was an effort to start an acting company in the western part of Los Angeles, some actors who wanted to do some work and be active on stage. Jim was in the company before I was involved, very briefly because I was in the service, I was stationed in Atlanta, Georgia. And I was listening to this very popular radio show called Gunsmoke. It was very popular, it was aired several times a week as I recalled. It was good.
And then I heard that Jim Arness was in town promoting a movie acting with John Wayne. I called him, we has a conversation. He said, are3 you here? I said, this is where I am stationed. I asked what he's up to and he said he's doing that television series called Gunsmoke. And I said, boy, if it is as good as the radio show, you are in for a ride because this radio show is very popular here.

Another western was The Virginian.
Yes, it was with Jim Drury. Jim Drury was the Virginian and, who played Trampas, Dug McClure, Dug McClure became very popular on the show. And he mentioned Lee Cob, he was involved in the show, wasn't he? He was not there anymore when I was there. But again I was playing heavies as a rule. I don't remember much more [s. The Virginian under TV Series]

What about Combat?
Combat starred a friend of mine, Vic Morrow. I met Vic in acting class. We would take classes together with a very good coach named Jeff Corey. So that would have been around '58, '59, '60. Vic and I started working on a project played in New York called Deathwatch. Very interesting, very intense prison drama and he secured the West Coast rights to play, he wanted to direct the play in Los Angeles and hired me and Paul Masurski and another actor, Michael Forest.  During the course of the play and later the movie Deathwatch, Vic helped me to get jobs on Combat.  ... Jobs in television lasted not much more than a few days or a week at most. So you are always, even while you are working, you are worrying about what you could do next.

... auditions...
As much as possible. The task of an agent was to get you auditions so that you hopefully get work. In fact the probably most important audition I ever had was something my agent had to fight for. It was an episode for The Lieutenant, a series Gene Roddenberry was doing and the director was Marc Daniels whom I had met previously. I used to do some teaching and one of my students was a young singer named Fabian. Fabian was acting on a television show called Dr. Kildare.
I was acting on the Dr. Kildare show myself. She played in Dr. Kildare and Marc Daniels directed it. I was on the set to help Fabian. Marc was directing this episode of Dr. Kildare and my agent had a tough time getting me access because of the kind of work I usually was associated with, which was ethnic characters. This was a movie star character. This guy was a movie star character. The series was about Marine Corps. Gary Lockwood starred in it, played a marine.

The story was about that movie star producer, who wanted to use the Marine Corps facilities to make a movie. At least that aspect was concerning my character. He didn't see me as this movie star. I understood. (laughing) Nethertheless my agent managed to get me an audition. And I went in and read a scene for Marc who said: Oh, you can do this. (Laughing) Oh, I think I can. A flamboyant, a fun character, very fast talking, "I need this and I need that, we're going to make this movie, we use thousands of marines" or whatever. They always had seen me playing dark, broody characters and this was a flamboyant character and I got the job. And that job led to Star Trek. I didn't meet him when I did the job, he saw the footage later and had me come and talk about playing Spock.  

Was Majel Barret in it?
She was in that episode as well, that's right. We both were exposed to Gene Roddenberry at the same time. She played my secretary or something in that show. And Marc Daniels became one of our best directors of Star Trek. I had a lot of association with him. He directed The Treasure of John Walking Fox, ironically, which was the last show I did before we began shooting Star Trek.

He directed you first ...
He directed me first in The Lieutenant. A little while later we did the pilot of Star Trek. And when began The Treasure Of John walking Fox I already had word that we'll begin with Star Trek. SO, when we did the Gunsmoke I knew I'll do Star Trek, but I did not know that he did. A couple of weeks after we began shooting Star Trek he came in and we were kind of linked to each other.

Before we get to Star Trek, I'd like to talk about Get Smart.

Yu. I didn't have a n awful lot to do. Something about a pool table, scenes in a pool room. I was one of the heavies. I wore dark sunglasses, trying to hide (laughing). I wasn't terribly excited about that, it was a job. The series was very successful. I didn't have much to do and tried to be creative in some way by dressing, trying to develop a character of some kind, do an accent or something. Somewhere in that show I ended up wearing dark sunglasses, some secret of the character.

Did you actually do that in a lot of shows, to ...

To change characters? I tried to if they let me. I tried to. I consider myself a character actor,
I always did. I figured out some way of developing something, a unique individual, something to
bring to the part. So I tried to build character traits wherever I could.

 In 1953 you appeared in Dragnet.
 
 What I remember about Dragnet was the way it was done. It came out of radio. They started the show on radio. The TV show was done very much in radio style. It was not an action show, it was tough dialogue. I played a heavy, I think I did a couple of them. Jack Web had a very interesting sensibility about what made the show work. And he directed a lot of the shows.

So, very often: If the camera were on you, for a close up for example, a single shot, there would be two teleprompters. One would represent him and the other one would represent his buddy, his partner. He would be over here some place, directing, somebody over there would read the teleprompter lines and you'd play to the teleprompter. you won't play to a human being. You'd say your lines to the teleprompter over here to Jack Webb and to that teleprompter if the other person had asked a question. And the show would run like that (snipping his fingers) bang, bang, bang, and you're out. "Thank you very much! Next." It was a startling experience. You never really felt that you have made human contact. Very true.

If they shot a master, and this was not only Dragnet, but cost effectiveness. A lot of the time at ZIV you shoot the entrance and the exit of a scene. They lay the camera back wide on the room, and the three or four people coming in would come in and take their places, and once they were established in position, they cut. They saved the film. They were not going to use all that footage of that large room. They'd bring the close ups.

A close up here, a close up there. And while you were in the same position they'd say: O.k., let's shoot the end of the scene. So, they shoot the entrance, cut, well, let's shoot the end of the scene, stop at such and such line just before you leave. Roll camera, action, everybody go, everybody leave the room, now: cut. Everybody would leave the room. Fine. Cut. Now everybody would come in for the coverage. And there were great economies of time, film costs, wrap costs, it was all about being economical. So you really learn to be on your toes. It was great training in that sense.

You really learned to be on your toes in the sense of where you were with your character and your performance because you didn't get a chance to re-work it out at lengthy re-takes of the entire scene as you might do now, until eventually by the time you get your close up. By the time you get your close up, you really know what your scene is about, you get a sense of the flow, no, no, no, make your entrance, make your exit, close up, bang! O. k.  Your performance: Laughter or tears or whatever, do it.

Weren't there even any rehearsals?
Minimal, absolutely minimal. And if you had trouble during the takes: Go back one line, pick it up! Get in the queue, go, o. k. You're back in the scene. It was very demanding and I always believed that a lot of the issue whether you could do it on demand, deliver the lines. And I tried very hard to be professional so that I would be invited back. That was my key, that was my gambit.   

But I worked in a show with Lee Marvin called 'M-Squad'. Let me tell you about this. M Squad was a cop show. lee Marvin played a police detective. The episode that I am recalling had something to do with fire. I think it was an arsonist or something, again a bad guy, my brother was played by Jim Coburn. And we were on the show together for three or four days.

And second or third day of the show we were called for work at 7:30 and 8 o'clock on the set. I got there on time, at the set no Jim Coburn. 8 o'clock I had a scene with him. Onto the set: No Jim Coburn. They were calling him and hear hear through the buzz that he was at home, overslept, and they woke him up with a phone call. Unheard of! Unheard of that an actor would hold of a television company. In the scene we had nothing to do. Well, we did some other things and I thought: Oh, this poor guy has just ruined his career. We finished the episode. Jim Coburn's next job was The Magnificent Seven. (laughing) He becomes a big star, and I was on time, you know? (laughing) Where's my big stardom? (laughing)

That was 1959. It was called The Fire makers, the episode?
Sounds right.

In 1957 you were on Broken Arrow.
Yu. Broken Arrow had been a movie with Jeff Chamber and Jimmy Steward. And Jeff Chamber became a big star playing an Indian, he played Cochise very successfully and he became a star of other movies after that. The series that I recall starred Michael Ansara as Cochise. And I think John Lupton played the American guy I forgot what character that was. And I was hired to play an Indian. The first one that I did, I think I did two or three of them. The first one I did I had no dialogue. I was hired to play an Indian that was on trial for something and being unjustly accused for something and I spent a lot of time in the prison, reacting in a very stoic way to these accusations. Cochise came in and proved that it was not me and saved me from hanging. I remember not much more about it than that, but I got to know Michael Ansara a bit, and he and I played brothers and something else, I don't remember, in Rawhide or maybe in The Virginian I think, some four or five years later we played brothers.

Also the Highway Patrol.
Highway Patrol was a big success for ZIV. Broderick Crawford starred in the show. he had a wonderful energy about him. He was famous for talking very fast. He'd say ten four. Get in the car, go! Get on roll on the highway, tempo!

And it was a very inexpensive show, shot in two days, one day out, one day in. I used to joke about the fact that there was some truth in, that, if you went to work in a show like that you report to the studio, let's say: at seven o'clock in the morning, drive onto a lot. parking lot. And there would be a small van loaded up with the actors waiting for you. Maybe they'd slap some make up on you, maybe they didn't. And I don't think I am imagining, it seemed to me one day they say: You don't get into the van, take this car and leave here, we are going to such and such place in Bronson Canyon, just about eight or ten minutes away. Follow us as far as so and so and then stop there. We are going up to the top of the hill and when we yell "Action!", drive the car the rest of the way and get out of the car.
So, what's happening was that the camera crew went up in the van ahead of me, I get into the car, I stopped at the appropriate place and I could see them on the hill and I yelled "Hello", and they yelled "O. k., come ahead!" The camera was rolling, I as already in the first shot. Bang! Like that. The first shot was in the cam before I even arrived on location. like Bang! Bang!, Bang!, Bang! And you'd be finished just about the time the sun was gone, the light was gone.

They literally would chase the light up the hill. If you were in a canyon, they'd say: The sun is up there, run up! Run up! They'd take the camera and the reflector: Roll the camera! Yu deliver your lines and maybe run another ten feet up to chase the light.

 

And if it was not possible to get all shots done at daylight, they would save the close up, the masters, the bright shots, they'd get you up against a wall. So, they'd see you approach a house for example, that you had a meeting there with some person, so that later, in the dark, they would get you against the wall and they would light you against a wall. So, the final shot usually were done in the dark with lights which give you a resemblance of daylight. And then you get in the car and go home.

How did that influence your later directing?
I think I became very economical. I was always under budget, I was always using less film than was budgeted, always using less time than was budgeted, lab costs. My lab costs were low because I was used to that kind of rhythm, kind of pacing.

Let's talk about more shows you did. One of them is Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Yu. I think again that I did more than one. The one I remember most clearly I was working with an actor called Werner Klemperer who later became Colonel Klink I think on Hogan's Heroes. We were playing Russians, Russian spies. It was a fun show, we were at each other constantly we were bickering spies and with a Russian accent which I had a good time doing. I knew Bob Warren before Men From UNCLE and I don't remember much more about it except that Klemperer and I really went over the top with this Russian accent. 

Did you work at all with Norman Felton, the producer?
"Norman Felton was the  producer of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He was a very successful producer, he had several shows on. I think he had the Dr. Kildare show and a show called The Eleventh Hour which was a . It was a show in which the central character was a psychiatrist and he had A Man From UNCLE and probably one or two others. Felton had a track record of starting young directors in television. He was good that way. He would let young guys come on the set and follow the directors around and learn the process, and then, eventually, if they though you had what it too, they'd give you a script and you'd become a director. I went through that process with him in the hopes for directing on The Man From UNCLE, in one of these shows. I followed a director named Joe Seargent who later became a friend and a director of some Star Trek and some other things I did. I don't know whether I would have gotten an episode to do or not, but eventually the Star Trek thing sold and that took me out of that mix. Then I became an actor for a while. Directing went to the wayside for a long time. But by that time I was beginning to become concerned that I wasn't really braking out as an actor and I thought: Maybe better I start doing directing.
I worked for Felton once more in 1971, I starred with Susan Hampshire, an English actress, in a two hour television movie that we filmed in England. I was a race car driver. Baffled!

Also in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. you worked with Bill Shatner, was that your first time?
Yes, Bill Shatner and I were in the same episode. I don't remember actually having anything to so with him, I think we were in a scene together with a whole number of people. And he had a sizable role, but I didn't get to know him, I don't think we ... the actor I interacted with was Werner Klemperer. I don't remember having anything to do directly with Bill. So we never got to know each other until Star Trek.

In 1963 you were on General Hospital
It was a job. I was playing a drug dealer. That's about all I remember. I don't remember much about the job itself.

And also you appeared in two episodes of The Outer Limits.
Very small roles, insignificant. 
 

Anything about I, Robot?
Was that an Outer Limit show, I guess it was. That was interesting. I, Robot was a classic science fiction story where a scientist has created a robot.
And then the scientist dies n a lab accident and the robot is suspected of murder and is put on trial. The actor who portrayed the defence lawyer was Howard Da Silver whom I admired in movies long before that. And I played a newspaper reporter who is covering the case.
An interesting little role. Not the mayor role by any means. But an interesting little role and I was cast because the director had done a lot of the ZIV shows. Leon Benson, I worked for him a number of times at ZIV. So, we were friendly and he hired me. A job which I was happy to get.
Many years later, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when Outer Limits came back on the air, my son, Adam, who had become a television director by this time, and I were having a conversation and he told me that Outer Limits was coming back, and I said: 'Here's an idea: There is an interesting story that was done on the original series called  I,Robot and I could play - now- the defence attorney who defends this robot, who's accused of murder and you could direct it. "Why don't you go and pitch that idea to the producers?" which he did, and we did the show. We had a great time, my son directing.

In the mid-fifties, '53, you served in the army...
I went to the army in December '53 for two years.

How did that coma about?
Well, it was a period of time I was eligible fro draft or reserve duty. I had to make a choice and I chose to join the reserve which gave me at least a deferment period where I could stay and continue to work in Los Angeles and go periodically to reserve meetings. And every summer for a year or two I would go off for a summer camp duty with the reserve.
But then the law required that I go on for an act of duty for a while. So I did. I went for an act of duty for two years. I went to Forth Ward in California where I did my basic training. I was very thoroughly trained as an infantry man. I think David Johnson and Clint Eastwood were there at the same time. I didn't know them, I remember hearing that they were around at the same time.  

When I was finished at Fort Ward after five or six months I got married here in LA on a 2 weeks leave and then I was sent to Georgia to do some further training at Fort Banning with the infantry rangers. And I was trained there for two months during that time I wrote some letter to various people to army headquarters and so forth, talking about the fact that I had a lot of experience with theatre and film and television. Maybe there was something I could do in the army, maybe they could use my experience better than being a rifleman in the infantry. And one day I got a response from an officer at headquarters in Atlanta.
I was stationed at Fort banning about 100 miles south of Atlanta. He said he wanted to come and talk to me, which he did. He said: We are doing an army talent show, a weekly army talent show, 1 hour. We have the talents. We have singers, we have dancers, we have acrobats, comedians and so forth. Is that something you could write and produce? I said: Sure, I can easily do that. And when I finished with the assignment at Columbus, Georgia, I was immediately transferred to headquarters became an entertainment specialist overnight. And they immediately changed my MOS, I don't recall what MOS stood for. My job changed from infantry to entertainment specialist like that (snipping his fingers). 
 

We never did produce that weekly television show for various reasons, but I did stay there for the rest of my army time for about a year and a half, writing and directing, in some cases acting as narrator or host on a number of other kinds of shows we did. Some television, some radio, some stage. We sent these shows to the headquarters which then went around to entertain the troops. We had some very talented people, some wonderful musicians, some great Jazz musicians who came out form New York. ... There was a pianist, Wynton Kelly, who was our key piano player, a very famous Jazz pianist who would play with all the greats. Ken Barry was a song and dance guy who did some tap dancing on one of our shows.
There was an army talent show on television, they would bring talented work from all the posts around the country and do this weekly talent show. And Ken got on it. And I said to him: You are going to New York, you need some exposure. You should contact these people at various studios in Los Angeles which he did. And he was due to get out of the army in a couple of months. He came out here and almost got work acting in movies.

What did your time in the service do for you?
It was very useful in a way. I was in a stage physically that I was beyond playing juveniles and really not mature enough, I had not come into a had not come into a specific kind of character for myself. It was good for me to get away for a couple of years. It was a good experience, a good directing and writing experience. And I also acted in Atlanta when I was there because I had a nine to five job in the army.
I was living off post, I had my wife with me, my daughter was born there in Atlanta at the post hospital, my first child. She was born in '55, March of '55, and during that period of time I got involved with the beginnings of the Atlanta Theatre Guild, a local theatre company. And I acted and directed for them. These were amateur companies, amateur performances and amateur productions where I could go to rehearsal at night and on weekends.
Eventually I directed and starred in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire for them and a couple of other plays for them. So I was able to have some good experience and spend the time well.

You did some films I would like to touch upon. The first one being Kid Monk Baroni .
195I, I was 20 years old, I had done a little bit of acting, I had a few jobs that I mentioned, the Pinky Lee Show and others, not a lot, an occasional job here and there, and I had an agent who was a hard working, struggling guy and that was not welcomed at the Mayor agencies. They wanted the guys that got a contract for the studios and make a lot of money. My career wasn't going to go that way, I was pretty clear on that. I had a career of playing characters and getting performances of various kinds. I couldn't walk in there and: Oh! That's kind of the look we want! No, I wasn't going to be one of those people.

I finally landed a hard working agent who was living in a trailer up in the canyon. And he somehow managed to convince a producer to interview me along with a lot of other young guys for the lead in a movie called Kid Monk Barony. The first interview that I went to almost knocked me out of the box completely. There were probably eight or ten guys in the waiting room and they were being called in, one at the time, and they went in, maybe meet the director, maybe read a scene and: Next! Five minutes, ten minutes, the next one would come out, it was already six thirty in the evening, past business hours and I am sitting there alone, I am the last one in the office. They did not even have me on the list. So one of them came out and said: Who are you?
Leonard Nimoy. Who sent you? Howard Swabant (?). Who's that? That's my agent.
I don't have you down here. Well, o.k., come on in. That's how it started. (laughing) it was like an uphill climb. It wasn't like: We were waiting for you, but eventually I got the job.

It was an interesting little movie, it got to be a B movie. Make fast, black and white. An interesting little story about an Italian kid from the Bronx who is born with a disfigured face. He was considered to be very ugly which he wasn't, but 'The Monk' was based on the look of the character, it was supposed to look animalistic. As a result of the way he looked he was very defensive and very argumentative, a high headed kid who eventually becomes a boxer. And during the course of the story he becomes involved with a couple pf ladies, one nice lady, one not so nice lady, one wants him for his money, one for another reason, and he has plastic surgery done on his face and it was a little melodrama.
And there was a mother and a father and there was Bruce Cabot, who had been a star in some films including King Kong, played my manager, my boxing manager. So, I get the job. Jack Larson, who was the original young guy in the Superman series Jimmy Olson, played my buddy and I get this job. I was in every scene.

My big success was that I was able to deliver the lines and do the boxing thing very successfully so that the 10 days schedule, 10 days to make a movie!, we shot it in nine, a day ahead of schedule, the producer was delighted. The whole picture was made for $80 or 90.000. I was paid a grand total of 350 We finished a day ahead of schedule. (laughing)...
I was paid a grand total of $350. plus two or three suits that they have bought for me for 50 bucks a piece and they gave me the suits. So, my total income was about $350 plus about $150 worth of clothes. I was well reviewed. It was a decent little movie, it wasn't bad, I was well reviewed and it gave me a lot of encouragement, but nothing came out of it.

How did your family react to the success? 

My folks were very reticent to encourage me. The only way I can explain it is, I think they were worried, if they'd encourage me and it didn't go well they'd feel responsible. They wanted me to get into something steady. They thought I should study law or be a dentist or be a pharmacist or an engineer something where you get a degree and you are entitled to expect a career. This is so unpredictable. They didn't quite know what to make of it. I don't think they ever really got in touch with what I was doing until the whole Star Trek thing happened. And suddenly: 'Ohh!'. They could see that I had steady work and I had a very public career. Part of that were little isolated incidents. They watched me on a television show and said: You were gone so fast, you only had, you were there for a second and you were gone. Yeah, that's right. That often was the case.

We left of talking about some of the early films you have done, ending with Kid Monk Baroni. Another film you have done was Zombies Of The Stratosphere.
Yeah. After Kid Monk I had a couple of jobs at Republic Pictures. Republic was a small studio which produced a lot of low budget Westerns and a Saturday afternoon 15 minute per episode kind of series. This would be for television. It was the kind of thing you would see for Saturday afternoon matinee, you'd see a feature, maybe sometime a double feature as well as the 15 minute episode of an ongoing story.
I think the first job at Republic was a Western in which I played a nasty Indian within a series of a cowboy named Rex Allen and his wonder horse Coco. Slim Pickens played his buddy and  they needed somebody who can ride  and an Indian, that was me. The serial called The Zombies of the Stratosphere in which three or four of us, Zombies from space, arrive in a cigar shaped space ship that wobbles across the screen and leaves a trail of white smoke and lands an earth.
As I recall the plot had to do with the decision of these characters from outer space, the orbit of earth was superior to their orbit. And the plan was to knock earth out of its orbit and move their planet into the earth orbit so they can move their planet into the earth orbit. Why we cannot orbit at the same time is beyond me. Maybe there is only room for one (laughing) and I played of those characters from space, my first time playing science fiction and my first time playing an alien.

Was there a specific make up?
The costume was very special; the costume was a big problem. There was no specific make up as I recall. The costume was consistent of a sweat suit, a tight jersey with a hood that left only this part of the face exposed, and it had all been sprayed which a latex cover so it had a very rough kind of surface. It was very rigid, very rigid.

It took two or three guys pulling these onto us to get us into them. And then because we were making the show during hot weather we were pouring sweat, we wore these also latex covered boots and literally every four or five hours we had to take off the bots and pour the perspiration out of them. I probably lost six or seven pounds because of this week of work. It was a job (laughing). The show has been colorized and as we sit here today it plays on television. We did it in 1952, almost 50 years ago, hard to believe.  

Another series you did was Francis goes to West Point.
Yeah, around the same time. A little before or after. I had a very small role playing a West point cadet.

Before we go in onto Star Trek I wanted to ask you whether you had any other appearances on television, film and theatre.
My first time on stage in Los Angeles came as a result of the rooming house I was living in. An actress who was performing or rehearing in a play came to me one day and said: Can you fence? And I said: Yes, I have done some fencing when I was a kid at the Elisabeth Peabody House that I talked about earlier. I had been a member of the fencing club and team using foil. Not the big savor, but using foil. And I said: Yes, I can fence. And she was in a production, rehearing of a production of The Three Musketeers. And somebody had dropped out, somebody playing D'Artagnion.
And this was a production which was to be done in a local theatre for kids on Saturdays for a month, every Saturday morning and afternoon for a month. I don't recall whether there was any money involved. I wanted to do it and I wanted to get onto stage. So I did. And a few months later a audited for a movie that was based on a radio television show called Queen for a Day. Queen for a Day started on radio, became a television show, weekly I believe, in which various women were invited to come onto the show and talk about their particular needs: Oh, my son is sick and needs an operation. Or: My washing machine broke and I have six kids and I don't get my clothing washed. They would tell their story and there was a voting process and whoever had the most affective story was crowned Queen for a Day. And she would get her whish taken care of, her washing machine or whatever it was. Or maybe a day visiting Hollywood and maybe going to the various movie studios and meet a couple of stars or so.

So, I was being interviewed for a movie that was being done on this subject. A movie of three short stories of women who'd become Queen for a Day. And I wanted this interview and the director said: What are you doing? And I said: Amongst other things I am in this production of The Three Musketeers. And he said: At the Corner theatre? I said: Yes and he said: Oh, I saw you. Were you D'Artangnion? I said: Yes. Oh, you were wonderful!
God! At a children's performance! I couldn't believe that a movie director had been there. And I asked how he happened to be there. He said that the lady who produced the show was a schoolmate of his from the Goodman Theatre School in Chicago. And she had called him and told him she's doing this production and he had come to see the show. So, I was hired for acting in Queen for a Day.

Did Jack Bayley had to do with it?
Jack Bailey was the MC of the original radio and TV show. He was in the movie as well.

Did you work with him?
No, no. The story I was sort of a back story which lead up for the lady was coming in to be the Queen of a Day. I think the problem was her son was missing and she needed help to find her son. And he had gone off with the carnival and I was a buddy of his. We were not on the Queen for a Day show, we were in the story that she told in the Queen for a Day show.

During this time of the 50ies and 60ies America felt the black list and the McCarthy. Do you have any specific memories of that?
I didn't have a clue what was going on. I was totally naïve and innocent and so totally preoccupied to make a living. I am shocked to this day that there was so much of that going on around Hollywood, what was politically happening, I was totally out of touch with it. I didn't know what it was about, who it was about. I've seen periodically those hearing on television. Some kind of political thing that was happening, I was totally out of touch with it.

So, you didn't know about the black list?
No, only much later.

But he never talked to you about it?
We talked about it a little bit, but by then I was much more knowledgeable. By then I knew what the circumstances were and I knew essentially what it was what had happened. I never had a lot of conversation with Jeff Corey. It would come up occasionally. We talked about a particular person or whatever. and he would say: He was blacklisted, too. 
 

Can you talk a little about your teaching and the studio you have opened?
What about it?

Just how did it come about for you.
I was studying with Jeff and one day he called me and he said: Would you be interested in teaching a class? And I said: Sure. At that time I was still working at another jobs. I needed that income. I was delighted, I was supporting my family, two kids. So I was delighted, he paid me well. He sat in the classes I taught and went with me through various concepts. I knew his techniques, I knew the process. I started with one class, weekly, one hour or three hour class that I taught. And then but by bit he became more and more involved with his own work away from Los Angeles. At one point I took over all of his classes, for weeks on a time when he was gone. And eventually after about 2 years of this I decided it was time to leave home and start my own studio, which I did. I rented the studio and started with my own classes. I taught my own classes for about three years. Typically the class would be about three hours, there would be a maximum of 20 to 23 students or 12 to 20 students. We did exercises, various kinds of improvisations for developing techniques of various kinds, emotional technique, craft techniques and so forth. And scene work. The students would bring in scenes from plays which would involve usually two people for the class. And there would be some discussion about what they were trying to accomplish and what they had accomplished and perhaps what they should work on next what they have not been aware of. It was very good, very intense learning process.

What was the method of teaching?

Well, I was teaching at a period when Lee Strausberg was very popular in the actor's studio in New York. That was the hot thing at the time. Actors tended to go where the heat is. Who is teaching the hot classes and who is teaching the hot ideas? Probably what we were teaching here was very similar. We had to deal with being authentic and being real in a scene. You have to understand that we are talking of a period of time where we were at the end of a certain acting area. Prior to that particular period, prior to the 40ies, acting styles were much broader and more melodramatic.

In theatre you'd see people doing things like this.

My earliest studies as a child learning acting techniques would have to do with learning certain kinds of poses to suggest certain emotions. You did a thing like this (hiding behind a hand) to show shyness, you did a thing like that (leaning back and holding the back of a hand on his forehead) to show suffering. You had to act with gestures you had to study then learn: I will apply this gesture here and I will apply that gesture there. So we were in the middle of a transformative period where acting styles were concerned.

We were teaching people to invest themselves in a character and let that be the organic center from which the performance grew. You were putting on an application with the exterior.
You were identifying with a character: The character's social condition, the character's physical condition, the character's psychological condition. Where did this character come from? And the effect on this person. Is the person from a happy home? From a broken home? Or perhaps is this person orphaned? If so, how has that affected this person? How did he or she feel about himself or herself? What kind of clothes would this person wear which might have had some significance to this person in terms of how she would have present herself to the world? Is it a subdue, quiet person who wears dark, dull colors all the time in order to fade into the woodwork or is this person wearing flashing clothes which says: Pay-attention-to-me kind of person. So you built a character built on these organic ideas, based on the background of a person, the social condition, is this a laboring person or is this an intellectual? A teacher or an academic? Is it a well educated person or a poorly educated person?

All these issues came to bear in the choices that you made in playing a character rather than showing pain in this way or anger in this way (overdoing it).
Or let it come organically from what you had developed in a character.
 

Have you always worked that way yourself?
I learned to do it. Somewhat instinctively but it became very clear to me in a very well designed study process when I started studying with Jeff in 1958, I had already had been acting for a long time, but I got clarity about what my work process was when I studied with him. My work changed a lot.

What were the playwrights that you focused on? 
The period in which I was studying and teaching the plays were Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Sandra Becket, Harold Pinter, and some others.

And has that changed since then?
I am sure it changed a lot, I haven't been in acting classes in a number of years. I don't know who they are doing these days, but I am sure they are probably not doing the same plays.

Let's talk more about the craft of acting. What kind of preparation you do before shooting a scene?
Well, it starts with the written word. It starts with what the author has given you to read to get a clue who this person is and what process this person is involved in. What kind of experiences this person is going through and how does he or she react in these conditions.
Is this a vulnerable person? Is this an emotional person? Is this a subdued person, a quiet person, reflective, thoughtful? What's the social condition under which this person is functioning? Is it a stressful situation? Or is this a funny situation? Has this person has a sense of humor or do you encounter the fact that she never laughs? There are clues hopefully in the text.

And each scene calls for a certain kind of understanding from the actor's point of view what the spine of the scene is supposed to be.
What is the scene supposed to accomplish in a play?

I say "play", I mean teleplay, screenplay, whatever it is. This is a scene where you get to know each other. Well, o.k., let's see what happens in that process. The way the people feel each other out. Where were you born, that would be a question. Farm girl? No, we live in the city, my father was an accountant. They start to learn things from each other. Maybe there is some charming kind of interplay going on. What's the subtext? Very important! The subtext is the question of the unspoken. We look at the unspoken. Very important!

We try to "layer" the performance in such a way that it is not just the words that are being exchanged, that there are non verbal signals which are given. You can take a lot of dialogue. The simplest example would be "I love you". One character would say it to another. Is there a way to say "I love you"? There are thousands ways to say "I love you", depending on what you are really trying to communicate. If you had an argument with this person and this person has been doubting your feelings you might say: "I love you" (energetically). If you just say it for the very first time and want to express it as a genuine feeling, you say "I love you", it's quite different. The subtext is different, the intention is different. What's the intention of the line? All of these things are techniques so to say.

What about working with a camera in comparison of working with an audience?
Yu, the camera, if you are in a proper production way, you have the appropriate sound, the appropriate camera equipment, it relieves you of the burden of having to project to a distance.
The stage. The closest audience, in same case it is just a few feet away, in some cases as much as twenty or thirty feet away. If I work in a small theatre the audience sits in a circle, you have the audience immediately close to you, and still the back row has to hear you and see you. It is much more intimate. The camera is right here, the camera can capture thought n a way it is quite surprising and shocking. And you can become minimalist. You can become very, very minimal and simple in your work. You can communicate a lot with just a finger or an eyebrow or a look. So you are relieved of the burden of projecting.

You prefer to stay in character when you're off character?
In most cases: Yes. I have found that, for me, I do better work in-between takes, if I stay in touch with the work, with the material, with the character. I can be distracted and get lazy sometimes make a phone call about some business and get like: Where am I? And when I get back into the scene: Where were we? Who was I? In what in what condition?, when I walk back in there. And that's not great. That in fact is one of the difficulties in doing movies when you've been used to a television schedule. Much longer lighting periods, much longer preparation periods for each shot when you do a movie. The productions tend to be more expensive therefore it takes more time to set up each shot. In television the pace is fast.

So, if you are ready to go back to the scene you take some time to get back to the character. In television the pace is faster, so you're in touch with the character. You don't have much time to get out of the character: "We are ready to shoot again."  You might finish a part of a scene in a movie and two or three hours later they are ready to continue the scene because of some major production set up. So, if you got out of character you'd better start thinking about the character again some time, some minutes before you go back to the set because in television there isn't that much time anyway. So, you are much more likely to be in touch with it. 

You started as an actor and later became a director. How did your experience as an actor influence your directing work?

The very first thought would be that I'll be able to deal well because I have been teaching actors, too. A director who's unsympathetic to an act of process of an actor can make it difficult for an actor. If the director says: I want you to do this here and then you go over and do that, and if these two disparate elements he or she wants to accomplish in a scene, don't have some kind of organic connection to each other, it creates a difficult task for an actor to accomplish that.
Now, the actor has a right to say: In character I am having difficulty in getting from point A to B, the director may arbitrarily want the actor to do this that because he has a certain technical point to fulfill. Whereas you have an understanding of the actor's process, you might find a way to help the actor better to get from point A to point B in a scene and not force the actor into arbitrary "boxes" that make it difficult to keep an organic flow of character. That would be the first thing.

Having been an actor on stages for a long time, I mean legitimate stages and sound stages; you also have a pretty good sense of how the dynamics of a set work. You have some advantage when you get behind the camera because you've been there for years in my case, around cameras, around actors, around sets and around props and so forth. You have the feeling of being at home.

Now I'd like to talk to you about Star Trek.
Oh! (laughing)

In 1966 you starred in Star Trek. How did that come about? You mentioned it briefly.
Ya, I did that job in an episode of The Lieutenant series for Gene Roddenberry. A few weeks after I had finished that job my agent called me and said: Gene Roddenberry, the producer of The Lieutenant show saw the footage, was interested in you, liked what you did and said that he has in mind for you a role in a pilot he is developing for a science fiction series, pilot. I really didn't give that a lot of thought. You hear this sort of thing, and you are a looong way from getting a job. He is developing a show and the pilot may never be shot. He has a role in mind for you which you may never get. The studio, the network might say: We don't like him, we've got somebody else. If you did get the job and the pilot is shot, the odds are against it.
A lot of pilots were made and many, many never became a series. So, the chances of this becoming anything meaningful was slim. But it was flattering that he had noticed my work and found it interesting.

A couple of more months went by and my agent called again on the subject and said: Gene Roddenberry would like to see some other work you have done so that he can get a sense of your range. O.k., this was interesting. So we sent him, as I mentioned before in The Lieutenant I played this flamboyant character, celebrity kind of guy, very cocky Ego. We sent him a video tape of a show that I have done, a performance I have given on a Dr. Kildare show which had been directed by a friend of mine, Elliot Silverstein, in which I played a very quiet, shy guy who befriended a blind girl and quoted poetry to her, a very sensitive, nice character. So we sent it and it came back saying he had seen this show but had not connected me with the performance because it was so much different to what I did for him in The Lieutenant, so, he was impressed I had this range. And the next call came that Gene Roddenberry wanted to meet.

So I went to this meeting expecting I was going to be auditioned or to read for him or whatever. I went to the meeting and he was very congenial. He said: Let's take a walk! And he walked me over to the serial design department and showed me the plans of the sets that were being built and introduced me to the scene design, brought me to the prop department, showed me some of the props that were being made, wardrobe department: Same thing: "Here are some sketches of the clothes". I thought: It is interesting; he is selling me on doing this job. And that was the sense what this as about. I thought: If I keep my mouth shut, I have a job.

He started talking about this character he had in mind. He told me a little bit about the character, that he would be from another planet, but half-human. And there would be a makeup involved, he wasn't exactly clear about this, not exactly what the makeup would be, but his first thoughts were: Pointed ears which would constantly remind you this character was from another planet. And he had in mind: Red skin. I am a character actor. Send me to the makeup department and I'll come back with something.

One of my idols was Lon Chany, the man with a thousand faces in a movie, because he changed performances so drastically from one performance to another. I considered myself that kind of a person. I go to the makeup department get something together and find a character. So, I was hired and I was asked to come to makeup to start working on ideas. And the makeup man was Fred Philips and we met and started up taking ideas. Now, at that time there was still a lot of black and white TV sets in the United States. Color was not ubiquitous, it was still a lot of black and white, and the thought came very quickly: If they were going to make that red makeup, really red, I was going to be black on the black and white TV set. And that was not the intention. It was not a black person. So we lost the red thing quickly.

Was it even tested?
No, no. In discussion we came to that conclusion. He said to Gene: We make him red, he's going to be black on a black and white set. There were too many black and white sets, you couldn't do that.

 

We are talking about the makeup.
Yu, it was a slow, long process. And as a matter of fact the makeup we ended up with for the first pilot was later refined quite a bit when we went into making the second pilot. The first pilot did not sell the series. It was very highly produced, very intelligent pilot, but the feeling was, the work came back: Too cerebral. That's what they said.

In the meantime I went through a very tough process. The makeup was very difficult to find. We work on it and we worked on it, we had eyebrows and we had the haircut. The haircut was kind of jagged. My first sense of the character was crewed. I didn't have a cool look in mind at first. I had this jagged haircut and bushy eyebrows and we went through a struggle with the ears, couldn't get them exactly right.
Desulu was producing the shop and they had contracted the earpieces through a company that couldn't do them well. Freddy Philips who was doing the makeup said: We must get them from somebody else, and they said "no, no, We already paid them. Let them do it". They did not get them right.
Freddy had to force Desulu to get me the proper ears otherwise it would have been a disaster. The ears looked grotesque and funny, but we did the first pilot and it was too cerebral. We did the second pilot and my character started to show up gradually. It was clearer in the writing and clearer for us in the make up department. That it should be cooler, more controlled , more logical, more intellectual, rather than a hot character.

And then I had a shock. My first experience with the corporate material, aside this cigarette thing I talked about earlier: When you were playing a heavy, you couldn't smoke. Now I had another kind of corporate experience. We made the second pilot. Now I had a different kind of corporate experience. We made the second pilot and the decision was to go ahead with the show and they were in the process of selling it to the various sponsors. And because I was in the show I got onto the mailing list of NBC or something. And one day I opened my mail and there was this pamphlet from the NBC, the promotion department. There was a pamphlet about Star Trek, this new series that would be on the air coming fall and what it is about, taking place in the 23^rd century and there is a great spaceship, it is called the USS Enterprise and here is the crew, photographs of various people. William Shatner as Captain Kirk, me as Spock, De Kelly and so forth. I don't remember who else was in. And I saw this photograph of myself as Spock. It didn't look right, something struck me strange. And the closer I looked the more I realized they had straighten up my eyebrows, they looked normal and they had taken of the tips of the ears. All what was left was the haircut. I didn't have a clue what this was about and I called Gene and I said: I just got this, Are you sure about the show? What's happening? I felt threatened, I wasn't sure whether they were going to cut me out. That was going to be my first steady job as an actor ever. You have to understand that prior to Star Trek I haven't had a job that lasted longer than 2 weeks. And here was a whole season of work. And he said: The feeling at the sales department is that they had a tough time selling your character as being a running character, feature character in this series because there were a number of things, specifically for example they said that the ears looked devilish and they would have trouble to selling to sponsors in the South because people in the bible belt might be offended if a television show having a devilish character was coming into their homes.
I see. That's an interesting problem. They thought the character could be offensive, the people at the NBC, at least in the sales department. That it could be offensive to people. They won't take a chance. There is a formulated thinking at least in certain quarters about what is acceptable in a television show.
Things have changed a lot since then, but there are people who go by a book, not literally turn to page 47 to see what kind of character could be, but there is kind of a book mentality which says: You don't do this, you do that, if this is a comedy you have to have a funny person, a not so funny person, a mother, a father ... you know? There are structures. In that time period you had a structure like you have the head of the family, male, you have the female counterpart, girl friend or wife. If it's a family you've got obviously a couple of kids for the kids in the audience, ages between 9 and 14 or something like that. Ideal is if the family has a pet, a pet dog or something, because so many American families have a pet, they are pet lovers. Lassie was big on television.

And here is a character who is like no other. Who in this country could relate to this character? The guys watching TV could relate to the captain, the ladies to his girlfriend or Mrs. Chapel who whoever lady is on the show. The older guys could relate to Dr. McCoy, the crusty uncle. But there is nobody who could relate to this guy. Who's got pointed ears out there? Who is from Vulcan? So why have him on the Enterprise? Gene was very animate on this guy. He felt strongly that the Vulcan character that I was going to play would be a constant reminder that interplanetary travel was normal now in the 23^rd century and that the crew of the Enterprise was not made up totally of people from the United States. It was the USS Enterprise. Not the United States Ship Enterprise, but the United Space Ship Enterprise, part of the Federation and not a United States ship. That was part of his concept. Every time I was on the screen it was a reminder that we have people from others planets in the crew. He stuck to his plan fortunately for me. And we got past that, the show went on the air and after a very short time it became clear that Spock would be o.k.

Lets get back a little bit. What was the initial concept of the show as it was explained to you?
23^rd century. A space ship reporting to a United Federation of Planets.  Part of a fleet. The function of this fleet is to problem solve, to do research, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Go out there and find out what's going on. If there is a problem, try to solve it, don't interfere with the development of nations, of other species, of other planets, but be helpful in problem solving and do some research, a very scientific orientation, trying to find out what is going on out there. Learn things and bring back that information.

 And what did you think about it when it was on television?
It was great, great. Because we were doing a kind of science fiction that I relate to.

To me there are two different kinds of science fiction. One is what I just discussed: Dealing with social issues, dealing with ecological issues, dealing with humanitarian issues, dealing with social justice, dealing with inequity, dealing with conflicts of various kinds that we can all relate to and understand. The other kind is the nuts and bolts science fiction. That has to do with a certain kind of ship that can travel at a certain kind of speed, they can beat the other ship, they can fly through a thing and get to the other side and fire rapidly and destroy and get out of there and more technical than I described, having to do with technology rather than human stories. I respond more to those, watching them or reading them. I enjoy something I can relate to as a human being.

Were the social issues something Gene Roddenberry wanted to focus on?
Clearly. We were in a period where the social issues were the issues of the day. We are talking about Martin Luther King, about race relations, we are talking about scientific issues that were being discussed for the first time, we are talking over population, ecological issues. People for the first time were becoming conscious about what might happen to this planet if we kept doing the things we are doing. And the war in Vietnam was a big issue during that period of time. Should we be involved in that war? Is it a war or is it a civil war between the North and the South just like our civil war? And how would we have felt during our civil war in the United States if someone came over and said: Oh, we come over to the other side of the country. We'll be with the Northerners or the Southerners; we'll be involved in this. Here, we from the United States came in and said we'll be on this side, we'll be involved in this. So, the question was: should we be there? And if so, what's our mission? Should we win this war? Is trying to beat up on people and trying to convince them into settling it? It were all these difficult, troubling issues. And we have been dealing with a lot of those issues on the show. The show was a great show for writers because good writers could come to it with their personal need for an expression of an idea. They could come with something they experience of their lives, their family, their country or with science or whatever is going on. "I have feelings about this and I want to tell it in a science fiction story." They would bring that to Star Trek, so that there is a lot of passion in the scripts we had.

You said the pilot was redone. Why was the show recast?

I don't know exactly what happened. Jeffrey Hunter was the original cast. He played a character called Captain Pike. When we went to do the second pilot I got word that that he was not coming back. What I was given to understand, maybe it was the simple truth, that he wanted to renegotiate. I heard he was a movie star, and was concerned about his movie career. And when he asked the studio to guarantee him a feature role or roles in a movie, as part of the deal with the series, they were not in the position to do that, they couldn't do that. So they couldn't make the deal and they let him go and they went after somebody else and that was Bill Shatner's Captain Kirk. That was the story I heard. Some of the other characters were recast as well. I was the only actor who was carried over playing the same role. Majel Barrett was in both pilots but she switched roles.
She was playing a character second in command of the ship, Number 1, in the first pilot. She became nurse chapel in the series.

Do you know why that role was ...
The Majel Barrett character Number 1? I don't know exactly. I wasn't present to those conversations, I don't know exactly why. The sense that I got was they didn't feel it was a useful or functional role, I'm not sure why.

Let's talk about the character Mr. Spock. Describe him for people who have never seen him.

Well, he was about six feet tall, very good looking guy (laughing).

Pointed ears, slanted eyebrows, slightly greenish tinged skin.  A severe ball haircut, short hair, ball cut across the forehead and a slightly greenish tinge of the skin was attributed to the fact that there was copper content in his blood, heavy on the copper side, the blood. So he had this greenish, somewhat greenish, yellowish greenish look. Typically thoughtful, reserved, took great pride in being a logical creature rather than a creature with emotion. In fact he came from an earth-human mother and a Vulcan father. And the Vulcans have been described as at one time having been EXTREMELY emotional and quarrelsome and had almost done themselves the end because they were always in a fight in general or with somebody else. And at one time in the past they had come to the conclusion that in order to preserve their race they had to move to logic and to eliminate emotion. Emotion was dangerous for them and catastrophic, potentially catastrophic. So, they ruled out emotion and became a logical race. And Spock was the product of a very logical father, a very logical line on that side. On his mother's side: Human. So he was a character who was in constant internal conflict choosing to be logical but having occasional to deal with the emotional side rather than to repress it or deny it. I thought it was a very human construct if you stop and think about it.
Many of us if not all of us have gone through this conflict, particularly during adolescence where it usually manifests the most. Before we become logical thinking people we are irrational, childish, impetuous, inclined to be angry and get into fights. Adults get into less fights than children because they have become thoughtfully rather than emotional. More left brain than right brain. So I think it was easy for humans to identify, to understand what that process was. In the earliest episodes we were able to demonstrate that, you actually saw Spock struggling about that control. The audience said: Uh! I get this guy. I know what's going on with him.

What about the strengths?
He is a very bright person, a scientist, very knowledgeable, very familiar with human history and human nature, extremely loyal, committed, dedicated to serving the fleet, the ship, the captain. Dependable, obsessive about getting things right. Sometimes a weakness, but usually a strength.

What about weaknesses?
Sure, there is always vulnerability. Showing emotion would be very embarrassing, for all, for all Vulcans. A difficult relationship with his father who always demanded more than he seemed to be able to deliver. He is trying to prove to his father that he is a good Vulcan, sometimes lacking in the emotional ability to relate to the humanistic situation, therefore can be faulty in being too logical, too scientific, too distant, too cold. McCoy would accuse him of that often: Cold blooded, blah, blah ...

The role of Spock: There is a difference between how it was originally written and what became of it later in the show.
Well; I think it was a process of development. It wasn't all there from the start, there were clues and there were potential opportunities, but I remember, I think it was the very first episode that we were filming after the pilot when we started the production, that there was a scene when the ship was being threatened by some outside problem, by an outside dangerous force, and there was a lot of activity in the ship, the captain saying: "Do such and such, press this button, do this, Warp 3, get us out of here!" and such. Other people were reacting and scurrying around. I think I am remembering correctly that Spock had one word to say, and it was "fascinating". And we were all looking at a signal at the screen. And all of them went (speaking very quickly): "Oh, Look at it" and "wrrrr, wrrr, wrrrr, wrrrrrrrr," and I got caught up in the scene and I said: "Fascinating" (bowing forward, looking excited and in tension.) And the director said, he gave me a brilliant note: "Be different, be the scientist. Be detached. See it as something that raises curiosity rather than treat." Well: "Fascinating" (detached, with curiosity).

Does he resemble anybody you knew?
No, not anybody I knew, but I began to realize that there has been a president for this kind of a character in a movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. Michael Rennie, the actor, portrays this character from another planet, who is extremely intelligent and not human, quite detached from the human experience. A cool, rational, thinking, peaceful person and very powerful, came to earth to save the people from earth who were heading for serious trouble saying to them: "If you people from earth are heading for serious trouble like an atomic weapon, you are a problem for other planets, be careful! Watch what you do!" There was a lesson in that kind of work.  

At that time I was being heavily influenced by Harry Belafonte, by what he was doing on stage at a performance at ... Theatre here in Los Angeles. I was a big Belafonte fan; I loved his work, his musical work. Later he became an actor, but I loved his musical work and I went to see him at a concert and I was truly affected by that fact that for the longest time he came out of stage in a black outfit and stood like a monument. Big ovation, he was there and he stood and we sit very quietly. And he sang. Next song. He must have been on stage for 10 or 15 minutes and in the middle of the third song, he opened up like that (putting both arms up, spread to the side). Some gesture, it was like: "wow!" It was gigantic!, because it had come from a minimal place.  

He was standing with his hands on the sides, kind of slightly hunched like he used to do, sand, and during the third song, he made a gesture. The whole place shook. Oh, what a lecture! If you are minimal then that (raising his finger) becomes a big deal. If you are minimal, then that becomes a big deal. Make a comment with an eyebrow is just as powerful as throwing punches. So I learned, I learned a lot from him.

So that was before Star Trek?
Long before. It was in the fifties when I saw Belafonte on stage.

Did you have difficulties assuming the role?
I wouldn't describe it as difficulty, I went through a process of gradually, gradually internalizing and internalizing more and more and more and more. And there were times I had to constantly remind myself. It wasn't my nature. On the contrary. My training  as an actor was to use emotions, to use gesture, to use color in my speech, to use tonalities to be interesting. And to be passionate. I would have enjoyed being passionate as an actor, playing passionate characters. So this was quite a shift for me. It wasn't me at all. It became me. I adopted personally some of the attributes of this character because I enjoyed them; I found them comforting and comfortable. And because by osmosis I picked it up. I was in that character whenever we were shooting the series. I was more in that character than I was in my own. If you figure the number of hours  in a week. I was there since 6:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night. I was there – in character. And then I was home for a couple of hours at night before I go to sleep and I'd be out of the character at weekend, but given that in a number of hours, I was Spock more than I was Nimoy. So, my character gradually shifted.

Was there a moment when you felt that you got the character?

I think that moment when I mentioned, that "fascinating"-moment was a big step. And I also I got feedback from the producers and writers who gave me clues about what was working. I have a natural tendency to do that (raising an eyebrow), I never thought about it, I always did. I guess I must have done it at a scene and somebody said something and that was my reaction. And on the next script, the next week, I see what a writer has written and it said: "Spock lifts an eyebrow". I said: Oh, that's working. (laughing) Oh, they are getting it.

And I would start to play to that. It's a pendulum swing.
Then they got me doing eyebrow on every page and I said: Wait a minute, guys, let's not  kill it, it worked, but let's not kill it.

Did you work close together with the writers?
No, I wouldn't say "a lot". Most of the script worked and I would say we actors were closer with the producers more than with the writers; we wouldn't have a lot to do with the writers, we wouldn't have much contact, they wouldn't be around, they would be at home. They weren't staff writers. These people would come in from the outside. They would deal with the producers; they would bring in the script, deliver and leave. So, most of our meetings, the interactions with the script were with the directors, mostly with the producers.

Would you talk about the filming of the show? Maybe the schedule?
My work schedule on the series was usually: Report for work at 6:30, ready to go on stage, to shoot at eight. There was about an hour and a half for makeup and about 10 or 15 minutes to gobble down a breakfast and get the clothes on and step out of the dressing room and onto the stage and the set, ready to start work on 8 o'clock. I was usually the first actor on the set. Bill Shatner was arriving at about 7, the others arriving at around 7. 6:30 Fred Philips and I would be there drinking coffee and get the makeup on. And the ears were not the entire process. Many people thought it was all about getting the ears on. The eyebrows were very painstakingly applied: Hair by hair each morning fresh. So, that was time-consuming, too.

Did you do rehearsals?
Rehearsals you do, but not outside the shooting schedule, within the shooting schedule. If an episode was shot on Monday morning typically you came on set ready at eight to do the first scene. And you'd do a rehearsal of that scene. You'd say: Leonard / Spock comes in that door to open the scene, and Bill is in his chair and De make a cross over this way as Leonard come in and meet him, De comes to the door and the two of you come down and land here and have this conversation with Bill. So, you'd say "action!", I'd come in through the door, here comes De and we'd stand here and play the scene, maybe two or three pages of dialogue: "What's up fellows?" "We just have discovered that such and such ..."; "Oh, really? I was wondering about that." "Yu, we'd better go." "O.k., Warp 3" So, that would be the rehearsal. And then you shoot it.

So, how long did you have the script before you started shooting?
That would vary greatly. Sometimes three or four days, sometimes the night before we started shooting. It would depend greatly on what condition the script was in when the writer delivered it. If the script was in good condition and distributable, we got it three, four days in advance, maybe even four, five days in advance. If the script was a last minute delivery or needed work we might not get the script until the morning we started shooting it. Some time even part of the script, some of it still being in the writing process even as we shot the show.

As an actor how did you feel about special effects, the transporter?
We did not have an awful lot of special effects in the original series. And special effects that were done were done very crudely and very quickly. The transporter thing was a very clever way of avoiding having to land the ship. To show the ship landing would have been a very expensive special effect. You'd have to shoot the model coming in on a special planet and you'd have to show exterior with the entire ship or a large section of it, and the door would open, people come out somewhere ... Get away without all of it. You step in a little chamber and somebody would say "Energize!" and you cut on the guy doing the buzz-buzz thing, and you cut back to us standing there for a few seconds, cut the film.

Now, we leave that chamber, the camera would stay exactly in the same position, locked down, roll some film of the empty chamber and do some simply dissolve from us there to us not there. So that you see the figures gradually disappearing. The special effects people would take this section of the film and took gold glitter dripping through each character so that you have that ripple effect. Now you were done. It was minutes shooting it.

We were talking about special effects on Star Trek. What about sound effects?
Minimal, actually. There were some sound effects which would be added on post production. But we did not seriously rely on special sounds. Maybe it was a loss. There wasn't much thoughts given to what kind of sounds would make an interesting story. Usually it was visual.

Were the shows filmed in sequence?
Each story? No, never, no. It is not economical to shoot a film on television that way. The economy of the business is such that once you are in a particular set, you shoot all the scenes that take place in that set, even if they are taken out of order chronologically. The story might open at this particular set and close at this particular set, we would then shoot the first and the last scene of the movie on the first day and then shoot the other scenes.

Let's talk about the set. How was it designed?
The bridge set was of course our most prominent set and most heavily used. It was made in sections like pieces of a pie so that they all fit into a circle. We very rarely had the entire circle in place, very rarely. Usually there was an open section we would all look at where there was supposed to be the viewing screen. And later they would shoot images of what we'd be seeing on that viewing screen. Very often the screen wasn't in place. Cameras would be there and the crew would be there shooting in towards us into the scene.

What about things like the doors?
Doors were manually operated. There was a good sound effect given to them, a "whish" kind of sound when they opened and closed them, but there was no sound to them when we were making the show, filming the show. And there would be somebody hidden behind the set who actually had a level to pull to get the door open and push it to get it closed.

Was there a lot of budget consideration?
Very much so. Star Trek was done on a very, very tough, very tightly controlled budget, very fast shooting schedule. And my understanding to it, though I wasn't a producer of the show or director or any, I was hired as an actor, my understanding was that the story had to be sold on a very low price, otherwise the network would not buy it, so, it was produced on a very low cost. Budget considerations were constant. Every once and a while we'd go over budget to show where we were. They tried us to show that it could almost exclusively take place on the ship because the set was available. Building another set for some kind of story on another location would be additional expense. So, once in a while we would do what we used to call a bottle-show which means that the show would contain only what we have in the existing sets to save money.

What about Desulu? Was there a lot of involvement?
Again I don't know. I wasn't part of that again because I wasn't part of the producing end of the show. The show was sold under Lucy's management and so was Mission: Impossible and another show called Mannix, which starred Mike Connors, a big success, in a two year period they sold three shows, which went on network, it was a big deal, and then Lucy sold the company to ...

When you were still filming?
Yes, we were still filming.

Did you ever meet Mrs. ...?
Once or twice. She never came on the set. But Bill and I were having lunch in the ... and she came by to our table and said graciously: "Hi, guys, you're doing great work. Keep it up. A lot of thanks.", and left. I think the next time we met her was at a reception for Charly ...  who was head of Golf&Western who was head of the studio and some of us were asked to say "Hello" to him and welcome him and Lucy was there.

Who were the directors on the series?
Marc Daniels, whom I mentioned earlier, was very prominent in a lot of episodes, Joe Sargent did some, Joe Paveney was very active did a lot of good episodes. Marc and Joe I think did most of the shows. They came from good theatrical background.  They gave the episode a lot of theatricality and interesting visual ideas and how to create theatricality with very little money.

What was the most important thing the director working in that show had to learn?
Get it done fast. How to get it done fast. It was constantly schedule, schedule, schedule.  If you got something interesting happening you had to do it in the allowed time and money, but schedule was primary. You had to get it done on schedule. In fact it got so bad in the second season that if, at 6:30, a crew member was not off the stage, they'd run overtime. It got so tight, it was absolutely not allowed. And the plan was that at 6:18 you could work. They had got exactly 12 minutes to get away their stuff for the next morning and then get off the stage or of the lot, either one. And I remember being in the middle of a scene at 16:18 and there was a call: That's a wrap! And the lights would go out and you were through. So, in some ways it was a relief because it was prior to working longer hours. And for me in particular, having had a makeup for a long time in the morning, I in some way welcomed that, knowing that at 6:18 we'd go home rather than have to shoot until 7 or 8 o'clock. But the quality suffered.

Were you interest in directing in that time?
Somewhat, somewhat. Bill Shatner and I both were and we asked for an opportunity to do that, but we hadn't been given the chance.

Did you know why?
I suspect it was simply a burden the producers did not take: We have got directors, why do we need this guy playing around, wanting to direct a show. Today it is very commonplace, very commonplace in series all over the place. Actors being given the opportunity to direct a show, as a way to keep the actors happy after the second, third, fourth or fifth season of the show, they'd say: Fine, you are given a chance to direct a show, how bad can it be? They are protected. The cameraman, the producer, the other actors know what to do and so forth. No, we haven't been given the opportunity.

Did you ever suggest any story ideas?
No, I don't remember suggestion any story ideas, but I remember I was probably being considered a pain in the neck with my script notes. Notes on scenes we were given to read prior to production. I often was critical. I wanted it better, just wanted it to be better. I think I was helpful at times, but sometimes even a helpful actor is resented. Think of it this way: You are a producer of a television series which means that we are dealing with writers constantly, we are dealing with schedules constantly, you are juggling the season. A writer comes with a great idea and you say: We'll do that for our third show. That means you have to give it to us by February 15^th . We start shooting February 20^th. By February 15^th not a script.  You'd say: I call him. You couldn't get him, no way to ask him. You have left a message, no answer. Two days go by, not a script. You haven't heard from the writer, you won't know whether you're going to get a script or not. You are going to shoot next Monday. What else could we do, what are we going to shoot next Monday? There is a script that is almost done, it's on the shelf. Pull that out, maybe we can do a rewrite on it. The producer is on it all night, come in the next morning, blurry eyed, delivers the script. Well, here comes the script from the writer, but it is no good, there's problems in the second act. Well, take back, fix it.

All these issues all the time and now, here comes the actor who's complaining about his dress, complaining about his telephone, complaining about his makeup, complaining about the food he is getting for lunch. And now he wants to direct. Please, please! Or as bad: He wants to change the script. After it has been worked on and worked on and you are now in the froze of having said to yourself: O.k., the script is shot as we have it now. I am in desperate shape for the script on Monday morning, and now he comes or she comes and having a problem on the script we are just shooting. No, no, no! Just shoot it! It's all done, we have done all that, I am onto this next thing.  "But this scene doesn't work." "Why doesn't it work?" "well, my character wouldn't do that."

(fed up:) "What do you mean: He wouldn't do that? Just shut up and do it!" You get into that kind of discussion and it is painful on both sides. But I didn't hesitate. I wrote long memos on both sides, some of them were published, about what I thought about a particular script. Very angry at one point because I thought the writers were playing fast and loose on some of the characteristic character traits of some of the character. There was a sense of competitiveness on the set: Was my character getting too much of attention? There it was like in any set: The pressure, the schedule. And trying to be creative on the set in particular on a very low budged show and shooting very fast.

By comparison: Mission: Impossible went on the air, started on CBS the same season as we did; a sister- show on the Jason stages. We were on stage 8,9 they were on 10,11. We had a strict 6 days schedule; they were shooting for 8 or 9 days. And, after they were finished with their shooting they would have coming an insert group; they would go and shoot little pieces of somebody screwing a thing at a wall or somebody stealing a thing from glove department or somebody breaking a painted glass, insert cuts, all that in post production. We never had any insert group. The show had to be entirely shot within these six days. We never went over six days. One show I remember we did in five. They always had 8 or 9 regularly. So, you get some sense of the disparity in time.
 

This time we talk about Gene Roddenberry. How was his day to day involvement in the show?
He was extremely heavily involved for the first season. Marginally involved for the second and off for the third. He was a master rewriter. He rewrote a couple of scripts which were not very good, frankly. He had great ideas, he could inspire writers wonderfully. When a writer came in with a script and the script wasn't working, Gene knew what it was about and even translated it into a good working script I think that was his best talent, it was editorial.  And when he was on his game, the stuff was great. The stuff was great. You could tell a Roddenberry rewrite. And he was hard working, very hard working. He was inclined to do all writings when everybody went home at 6:30, 7 o'clock until 4 or 5 in the morning and leave, sometimes leave at three or four in the morning, sometimes when we come back at 6:30, "Here is the script", and he went home to sleep.
 

What was his vision on the show?
His vision was very good. An involved society of mankind, wise enough to know that war was not the answer. A great believer in science. Not a believer in theology. In the contrary. He wouldn't have anything on the show that had to do with God. No gods, please, no worshipping, please, science, science, science. Science is the answer to the problems.

What about Gene Coon?
Gene Coon was our best secret weapon. He was an extremely prolific hard working responsible guy who was very good with ideas with pounding stuff on. If you needed a script in a couple of days and Gene had an idea, he'd get the stuff pounded and you'd have a shootable script. Gene was kind of the portrayal of the hard boiled newspaper guy in the old movies, pounding on the typewriter. He'd sit there with a lamp and maybe a hat on his head, a cigarette going and a drink and pounding, pounding, pounding. Gene gave us the Klingons. The Klingons were his idea, so we had a wonderful adversary in the series.

What was the concept of the Klingons?
Totally irrational. Warrior race, believing only in conquest. Trust no one, not even your fellow Klingon. Trust no one. Destroy whatever gets into your way, paranoid, suspicious, tough, that's a Klingon.

Let's talk about the producer Robert Justman.
Robert Justman was a terrific coordinator kind of person, he had taste, he could be a wonderful sounding board for producers and writers. He was also a great nuts and bolts man.  He could move budgetary things around and he was very good for me because he had Gene's ear. And sometimes my chemistry and Gene's didn't work very well, talking about Gene Roddenberry. I would go to Robin Justman and got a good ear to talk to. I could tell him about an idea or a concern and would know he would carry the water to Gene so that he could tell the story better and it wasn't the actor coming in. "I was having a talk with Leonard" "No!" "Wait a moment, wait a moment, he's had an idea." (laughing) And he would help me a lot, he was very helpful.

There was an executive at Desulu, Herb Solo.
Herb Solo was one of the people who were involved in selling the show. I don't know how much he was involved in making the show. I think he claimed that the show was originally his idea or it came to him in another form or he was important in helping shape it, or how it would be I don't know.

Would you talk about the writers?
The writers? The writers ranged from functional to great. Occasionally we would get a clinker; somebody would get an idea and couldn't deliver the script to make it work. There would be chaos. It would have to be rewritten from scratch or set aside. But some of our writers did their best gave us great stuff. Never enough credit. Writers never get enough credit. They were working hard and some of them were brilliant, did some beautiful script. I can't name a lot of names for you, but some of them wrote some very beautiful stuff.

Did some of them act in a show?
No, no. They did not act in a show.

What about the use of humor in the show?
Humor? There was very good humor developed between Spock and McCoy, that friction between the humanist versus the scientific rational mind. Occasional humor between McCoy, Kirk and Spock. We had a pretty good grip on it, got good laughs on the show.  The audience enjoyed it a lot. I used to compare these three people as the Hamlet kind of construction. Kirk in the center and his human side being McCoy and his rational side being Spock, both part of the same character. So that, if you listen to the various opinions how to deal with the problem, almost like a conversation inside himself, trying to work out in his own mind, we were always voicing his two sides of the issue, just the way you would for yourself.

In that way we can talk about Mr. Spock's relationship to the other characters on the enterprise. Can you talk about his relationship with captain Kirk?
Great sense of brotherhood, loyalty, appreciation for the talent, the gift of leadership that Kirk showed, I would say Spock was totally devoted to seeing to whatever Kirk needed done get done.

Dr. McCoy?
As I said before: The opposite. McCoy was constant source of Spock jokes. The humanist, the feeling character, therefore the weak character. Spock enjoyed a very dry way, throwing jabs at McCoy who threw them right back at Spock, very funny.

How about the actor who portrayed him, DeForest Kelly?
De Kelly was a superb craftsman, wonderful guy, son of the earth, he'd be seen as a country boy, but he had an urbanity about him that he could successfully hide in order to play the country doctor.  Very wise, had been around a long time, had great theatrical and movie experience. He had been under contract with Paramount many years before he had started with Star Trek and had done some work with some great people and of his own; I thought he was a great addition to the show.

Mr. Spock's relationship with Scotty?
Scotty? A mutual sense of appreciation for Scotty's craftsmanship, his engineering abilities. He is the man who keeps the ship running, he does it well. Stronger relationship between Kirk and Scott. Spock and Scott did not have a lot of interaction in the show. Kirk and Scott did. Scotty was captain Kirk's miracle man.

James Doohan portrayed him.
Yu. Charming, energetic, life loving, lusty guy.

And Lieutenant Uhura?
Lovely, bright beautiful, energetic, interested, passionate lady.

And Nichelle Nichols?
That's Nichelle, I just described Nichelle.

And Mr. Sulu?
Mr. Sulu. Very functional, very by the numbers, but with a passionate hidden, secret life, that desired to be a flamboyant swashbuckler behind his very conventional facade.

And George Takei?
Same thing (laughing).

What about Pavel Checkow?
Chekow, a Russian dower nature, and I talk about Walter, too, passionate by nature, a warrior by nature, good hearted, good natured, decent, loyal, hard working and worrisome.

And the actor William Shatner?

Energy personified. A ball of energy. Constantly looking, digging, searching, let's try to use that, EXTREMELY ENERGETIC, which gave me a place to exist as Spock, much more so than ever I would have had with, with all due respect to Jeff Hunter, who was the original captain, Captain Pike. Much more so. Jeff Hunter played Pike as a thoughtful, much more introverted person. And I think, when I was in a scene with him, I was trying to provide energy because I thought, if he's playing introspective and I am playing introspective, I thought it maybe, could be a dull scene. So my tendency, if I was in a scene with him, was trying to provide energy around him. Bill Shatner provided all the energy needed in a scene, I could be more reflective and more reactive, and I think it helped me to develop Spock a lot with Bill Shatner who came on the way as he did.

How did the cast get along?
It seemed very good in general. When you got characters like Chekow, Sulu, Uhura, myself, McCoy, everybody is wanting to make more of a contribution – always. You're reading the script looking for "What do I get to do?" in the script. I like the script, but what do I get to do? There is that constant struggle to try to inject yourself, to try find ways of making more of a contribution, to take stage. I want to take stage. I want a scene of my own. It is always that. So, I think that this is true in many series. It's a family; everybody is looking for their position. Where do I come in? How comes he always get the good food and I get the leftovers, you know? How come he gets stake and I'm eating Hamburger here? How come, she gets the good potatoes, mine are cold? Mom! (laughing) It's all family stuff.

Did the producers try to accommodate that?
If possible, Typically producers will make promises which they sometimes can keep and sometimes can't. Oh, we'll write a show about you, we'll write a show about Chekow, we'll write a show about Uhura; if it happens, maybe it doesn't.

How about the show's popularity?
It was intensely popular amongst a limited audience, to begin with. The people who loved it were fanatical about it. Not an awful lot of people cut onto the show early on. Scheduling was a big problem. The people on NBC in my opinion didn't get the show they anticipated. They were looking for a rock and a sock and space fight and battle show. The nature of the shoe because of the budget and Roddenberry's style was not about that. And I think they were disillusioned and disappointed with the show, frankly. So they didn't give an awful lot of promotion and worse time slots, which provided a self-fulfilling prophesy that the show wasn't going to work. They weren't terribly supportive and they cancelled the show at the end of the second season. There was a tremendous outcry from this very vocal audience and they put the show on for one more season and, as to prove that the show wouldn't do well, they put us on a 10 o'clock Friday night, date night, all of the audience would be out not watching television. And sure enough the show did dismally in the third season. The show never was a big it, but it did even worse in the third season than it had done in the first and second season. And we were gone, this was the end of it.

Let's briefly talk about some of the first episodes of the program, the first being Devil In The Dark.
Great episode. And as an example how ill-treated writers were, I don't even remember who wrote it, but it was a wonderful episode. I think Gene Coon wrote it. It was a good, classic Star Trek with a wonderful morality tale and it worked extremely well. What can I say? We were called to a colony where some minors were having a problem extracting some kind of important mineral. Minors who worked below the surface of some planet and they were being attacked by some creature. This creature was actually killing minors. And we discovered that they had unintended broken into the nest of the creature that had laid it's eggs in there, a mother creature, maternal creature, and they were destroying it's eggs. To protect her eggs this creature would get up and killing a minor or two. When we discovered that we worked out a talk between the creature and the minors to work constructively with each other. The creature would help the minors find veins of the mineral they mining and they in turn would respect the eggs and her children. Devil In The Dark was a name given to the unknown. The minors didn't know what this was, they were terrified and therefore they demonized it and attacked it.
 

You used the mind melt. Would you talk about the origin of that?
Spock had a mind meld with this creature, the Horta creature. He was for that creature. In an effort, because we had no language, no speech, so he was trying to discern what this creature was about, what it had to say and what it wanted to communicate to us. And it was through this mind meld that we discovered the story I just told: A mother trying to protect her eggs.

Another Vulcanism is the neck-pinch.
That was my way of avoiding fist fights. I had been very tired of playing heavies and guns and all the fist fights, or gun fights or whatever kind of fights with adversaries in television and movies. Now, here's a chance to cleverly avoid all of that. I didn't want to be involved in fist fights in Star Trek. There was an episode where Kirk was split into two characters, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. A malfunction of the transporter split him into two personalities: His good side and his evil side.

Was it Mirror, Mirror?
Perhaps. No, no, I don't think so. Mirror was an episode in which Spock took on a different personality. But in this particular episode, I don't think I can recap the title of the show, in any case there was a confrontation between the evil and the good Kirk in one scene and the evil Kirk has a weapon and was saying "I don't need you, I don't need you!" The good Kirk was in danger to be killed and anyway would never be the same again. The writer had written that Spock sneaks behind the bad guy and hits him over the head with the bottom of his phaser to knock him out. So I suggested to the director that I had this special capability of inserting some energy into the human anatomy to render the guy unconscious. He said: Let's see what it looks like. I explained to Bill what I was going to do and I got behind Bill and Bill throws up like that and drops on the floor. The Vulcan neck pinch was born. And I was out of fighting, doing this to knock people out.
 

The Vulcan salute?
That came from my Jewish background, that's a gesture which is used in priestly benediction during Jewish services in Synagogues. When the Kohanim, the priestly tribe, bless the congregation when they do this (showing the blessing with both hands). This (showing one hand in the shin position) is the letter shin, Hebrew alphabet, first letter of Shaddai which is the Almighty's name in Hebrew. And the suggestion is that they are using the symbol of the Almighty's name in order to bless the congregation. I saw it done as a kid, transpired learning how to do it and got it into Star Trek.

Was it known as what it was?
No, I didn't make an issue of that. We were doing a lovely episode by Theodor Sturgoen, wonderful script, called Amok Time in which Spock has to be taken back to Vulcan, insists to be taken to Vulcan, because he is going through this pon farr condition which is a mating condition. And he has to go back to fulfill a marriage betrothal which has been arranged for him since he was a child. We get back to the Vulcan planet and are confronted by this procession; they have come to meet us and a very important matriarch who is being carried in a sedan chair. And I am to greet her. I haven't been at Vulcan for quite a while, and we were supposed to say Hello to each other, and I suggested to the director that there should be some Vulcan thing that Vulcans do, like humans shake hands, military people salute each other, Asian people bow, we have rituals. So, what's a Vulcan ritual? I said: What about that (showing the Vulcan salute) and he said: O.k. So I did that and she did that. The next thing I knew was that it was in the script: Spock does the Vulcan salute. They cut on.
 

Do you have a favorite episode?
Favorite? Well, you just mentioned a couple of them. Devil In The Dark was wonderful. Amok Time, Theodor Sturgeon, was a beautiful, poetic script. He wrote "live long and prosper" in that script, the first time those words were spoken. There was another wonderful time story written by Harlan Ellison: City On The Edge Of Forever, a wonderful love story between Kirk and a lady playing in the 1930ies, wonderful script. Roddenberry, Gene, took the original pilot and wrote a wonderful envelop around it, so that we could use the original pilot material in another series. I think it was finally called The Menagerie. That was wonderful: Two episodes that we did, using material from the original pilot with Jeff Hunter playing Captain Pike, and making a two-episode story of it.

Do you have a least favorite?
Spock's Brain. Somebody's notion of what it would be like if some aliens decided they needed Spock's brain, took it out of his head and brought it to their planet to help them run their planet or something.... not good. Not good.

And the film?
Not good. I knew it was not good.

I mentioned earlier that you received an Emmy nomination for every season as best supportive actor.
Yes.

How did you feel about it?
I felt elated that I was nominated. But I think, to be frank about it, the fact is you can't win creative honors in science fiction. Actors in science fiction don't win best actor or best supporting actor. Even the writers of writing good science fiction are considered as certain genre somehow. You can win an award for special effects in a science fiction television or a movie. But you can't win awards for acting or writing, typically. I can't think of any actor or writer or director winning an academy award for science fiction. It doesn't work that way. The academies typically tend to honor social drama of a contemporary kind, something that has powerful social significance today. Whatever it is, it's a judgment that's passed, but I was flattered to be nominated. The nomination came from a membership, the acting department membership. I was very flattered by that.
 

What do you think is the legacy of Star Trek?
I think it's different for different people. I think it gave a tremendous number of people something very interesting to think about – through drama, through science fiction. A vision of ourselves, a vision of the world, from this particular point of view, from an advantage point of another society 300 years later, dealing with issues and problems we can relate to, that's the important legacy. I think in terms of creativity, in terms of production, in terms of industry for me the legacy has always been that the good story has been what it needed: Always a good story. A good story is a good story. It doesn't matter how many ships blow up or how many missiles you fire, how many explosions you show or how many disasters are depicted, fights or action or whatever. It doesn't matter if it's a good story, something you can take home with you, think about, what effects you, you are part of the human race. For me that's an important legacy.

You've gone to Mission: Impossible in 1969. How did that come up for you?
Star Trek was cancelled after the third season. They were sister shows as I mentioned earlier. They were both being produced by Golf & Western. Martin Landau and his wife, his then wife, Barbara Bain, were both on Mission: Impossible and were having trouble when re-negotiating for their fourth season. And they came to an impasse as for my understanding. And the studio decided they could not go ahead with them, they could not negotiate with them any further, and the next thing I know is that I got a phone call from my agent who said: You are wanted for Mission: Impossible. I have been out of work for maybe a month after Star Trek and I was o.k. I felt that I had a future. I had some recognition now and I could find work. Comparatively a very lucrative job. I was offered much more money to come on Mission: Impossible than I had been on Star Trek. And I was also very intrigued with the idea that the character I was going to play was a person who portrays other character, so that I could play a lot of diversity.  I would play a lot of different kinds of roles. And as a character actor that was very appealing to me. So I went to work for two seasons. And then the fun ran out. I wasn't interested beyond that. I found the same characters come around again. I was again asked to play the Latin American dictator, I was again asked to play the very old man, disguised as a spy, disguised as the old man. I was again asked to play the European bureaucrat or dictator, I was again asked to play the blind man, I was again asked to play the Japanese character. I had done that, I did that last season. And there was no character development now. There was no internal life to these. These were all charades, they were all empty characters. So there was no spiritual replenishment. I was just being asked to throw on make up and do this or that and be gone again. I asked to let me out and they did.

What was the premise of the show?
The premise was that there were special, extremely difficult missions which were handed over to this crack team of specialist let by Mr. Phelps, who would sign the mission to his various team members: Barney, you do this, Paris, you do this, so and so you do that, we are after this person, here is a picture, and the aim is to do some secret award to solve this problem. This person is the problem. We gonna solve this problem, we gonna trick him or her in such a way that he or she leaves office or turns over papers or whatever it is, we have to get them.

What was your character's name?
My character's name was Paris.

Was there any back story?   
I wish there had been (laughing). A back story would have been helpful. Paris was about town, a bomb involved kind of guy. There was ONE moment, one moment in one episode that we saw Paris functioning as Paris, brief as it was. Usually the show would start with a meeting, a meeting with the Mission crew and Mr. Phelps would sit and we ask a question like: How much time do we have? Or: When do we start? What country is that? Or: Why are we having this problem? He'd answer that and the scene would be over. And from thereon in you'd be acting in the charade. And there was one episode where Paris was not in the original assignment. And we see Paris in his apartment which we have never seen before. It is night and Paris comes in dressed in a tox, maybe he comes in from a date or an event, some play. And as he walks in the phone is ringing. He picks it up and it's Mr. Phelps asking him to come to work on an assignment. That was the most personal moment we ever saw of Paris in the entire two years of the show. There was no internal life for Paris. No back story. It was all about what Paris could do, not about what Paris was.
 

Would you talk about Peter Graves?
Peter is a terrific guy. Easy to relate to talk to, very professional, a perfect Mr. Phelps, man in charge, authority figure, Jim Arness' brother.

Greg Morris?
Same. Fun guy, fun loving, great sense of humor, big laugh. He was always stuck in elevator shafts and big tunnels digging his way through problems.

What about Peter Lupus?
Big, wonderful bear of a guy. Like a marshmallow, a giant marshmallow. Easy to talk to, wonderful to have a good time. He was a health addict. He would pop up with a handful of pills, vitamin pills, every morning, gulping them down, gulping them down, wow! (laughing)

What about Sam Elliot?
Sam Elliot I didn't get to know very well. My memory of him was that he was very curious. He didn't have a lot of experience when he came to the show.
I remember him lurking off behind the camera, watching us, to see how we did what we did. And I think he had much more to do on the series when I left. I left after the second season. I assumed he stayed on longer. I didn't pay much attention. He stayed longer than I did.

One more name: Lesley Ann Warren
Lesley was terrific. I always admired her. She and I came on the show the same time: The fourth season. And she left in the end of one season or of two. She had the same kind of approach to acting that I did, so I found kind of a camaraderie spirit with her. We spent a lot of time talking ideas about acting and what we might bring to the show. We both had kind of the same frustration about the show. She wanted an internal life, too. Later, when I got to direct in television, I hired her to star in an episode of Night Gallery when I was directing. I always though highly about a great talent like hers.

Do you have any favorite episodes?
On Mission? (thinking ... ) Probably one of the very first. I got to do a Che Guevara character. Beard, barrette, cigar, a Cuban or South American guy. I enjoyed it: I am going to get into something in the series, and it went downhill from there. I don't mean to renegade the series. The series was always enormously successful; it went on for eight years. And it went on for several years after I left. So, obviously I didn't do it any injury. It survived very nicely without me.

It was a very interesting idea, a fine idea. It was a very visual show as compared to Star trek which was a very verbal show. Star trek depended very heavily on the actor and on what the actors could do or say to each other. Mission depended very heavily on the camera. Where the camera would be, where the camera pointed to. What you would see: A piece of this, a piece of that. It became a jigsaw puzzle that comes together in an interesting kind of way. You could walk out of a room in Star Trek and listen to keep in touch with the plot. You couldn't do that in Mission. You walk out of the room, you missed the scene and get lost when you came back into the room. In Star Trek you could hear it and stay with the story.

What about the way both sets were run, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.
As I mentioned before Desulu could sell mission at a much better price. So they had a much better budget to work with, much better time, and they had five characters as I recall where a lot of the work was split. So, if you were on Mission, you had a lot more relax time. In Star Trek Bill Shatner and I, as soon as the show began, we were in almost every scene. Once in a while there would be scenes he alone or with somebody else or me alone or with somebody else, but much of the time we were in everything. Whereas in Mission I had a lot of down time. Because the time was cut amongst al the different characters. When they were shooting all the stuff with Barney in the elevator or subway, or tube or so forth, we would sit in the dressing room and read or watch television or take a nap. We could take care about the business. This time was boring, but it was also restful by comparison.

In 1971 you costarred in the first television movie Assault on the Wayne.
Not a very good experience. The script wasn't exactly right and I don't think I was very good in it. I don't think I did a great job. I was playing the captain of a submarine under duress, under strange circumstances, a guy with a problem. And that, I didn't handle it, I wasn't comfortable doing that. Something of that didn't come together very well for me. The show was ok, we got it done and I was the star of a television movie for the first time, but I wished I had done something better. It was called "Assault on the Wayne" and the joke was. "Who assaulted John Wayne?" (laughing) The Wayne was the name of the submarine.

In 1972 you began directing.
72, yeah. 72 I signed a contract in the Universal Studios for a year. The intention was to work there doing guest star enrolls. And my hope was to start doing some directing. And in fact they had hopes for developing a television series for me to star in. And the most exciting thing was that I started directing there that year. I did guest starring roles on Colombo and two or three other shows, I got a television movie with Henry Fonda which was a kick because I was a fan of his.

I acted in a couple of Night Galleries. I turned down a lot of stuff which made the studio very unhappy with me because they were wondering how the moneys work out. They were paying me a weekly salary. I went to Zit Chamber who was the head of the studio and said: When I came in I was a well liked popular character actor, I could go out of here as the heavy of the year. I often played a heavy n each of these shows, a couple of them. Obviously Colombo was always fun to do and people came on to play there, but all of the others were just bad people, you know? And I had done so much in the earlier years, I wanted to put that behind me. And Gene Roddenberry was hired, too. And he came in to develop a television series where I was supposed to star in. And when I cut right to the chase here, when the time came, at the end they cast somebody else.
I was relieved, frankly. I didn't want to be in another series. He did a pilot for something called The Questa Tapes I think. I was shocked. They were developing the make ups for me, the wardrobe; I saw the sketches in the wardrobe from the make up department based on my face, sketches based on my shapes and so forth, then, days before we started shooting I discovered that they had hired Robert Foxworth to play the part. To this day I swear to you that I don't know exactly what happened. Gene said that, he was the producer and the writer and they'd called him, and said they'd liked to show him some film. He went to a screening room and they showed him a film of different actors for this role and he said to me: They showed me some footage of this actor, Robert Foxworth, and he said to me: They showed me some footage of this actor and said what do you think of him? And I said I liked him, and the next thing I knew was that they had hired him to play a lead in the show. Gene, really? But that's the story he told me. I was relieved. I said: Thanks, I am out of here. I want to go off and do other things.

In 1972 you directed Night Gallery.
Night Gallery. 

Was that your first time directing?
First time directing for television, yes. The producer again was a guy who had a track record for starting directors. And I was given a very lovely script which was called Death on a Barge which was a Romeo and Juliet story in Vampire terms. The girl is a Vampire, we discover. And dangerous. And her father knows that she is a Vampire and keeps her on a barge because the barge is surrounded by flowing water and a drainage canal. And a Vampire cannot cross flowing water. So he feels he's got her safely locked up on this barge. A young guy comes down in the dark and sees her and they start ... He is on the dock, she is on the barge, and they fall in love with each other through conversation. And eventually one day the young guy comes to talk to her and discovers that the canal has been drained. The water is gone. And she is out somewhere. She is out and will kill somebody. But he is still very much attracted to her and ends up going on board the barge to have a private moment which turns to disaster. He almost bites the dust and the father comes in and grabs a stick and ...( shows how the stick is pushed down heavily) – that's the end of our Vampire-Juliet. I had a lot of fun doing it.

You worked with Jack Lair?
Jack Lair was the producer. The script was poetry. It was a very good script. He gave it to me to read, I had approached him several times: I want to direct, I want to direct. And finally he called me one day and said: Come on over. And he handed me a script: Go and read this and tell me what you think about it. And I came back and said: Great, I love it. He said: You should, it is a good script. And he gave it to me to direct. The cameraman on the series was very helpful. The man was Jerry Finn Aman, who had been a cameraman on Star Trek. So I knew him, I went to him, I said: Jerry, I am going to direct the next episode. He said: Fine. So I knew I was in good hands with him. He was very helpful.

...

In 1976 you hosted In Search Of.
Yu.

How did you get to it?
Pure luck. I had been hired by another company to do a pilot for a similar series called The Unexplained and they had me under exclusive contract for a period of time during which they had the opportunity to sell that series of the pilot we had done. It was very different in style. It was a sit down and guesses kind of talk show. Some footage would have been thrown, but I was essentially interviewing people supposedly about their experiences. There was a young guy who claims that he has been abducted by a space ship, by aliens and those experiences. So I did the pilot and then, during the selling period, my agent called me and said we get calls from this other company that has a series called In Search Of and they want you. But I have told them they can't have you for a while at least because you are tied up with this Unexplained contract. However, he said, they know what the due day is of this, when it expires, and they loose you, they have an option on you. They didn't sell the show.
The day after the option ran out Bang! They called and hired me to do In Search Of. It turned out to be a very lucky break for me. I had a lot of fun doing the show, the subject matter was fun, sometimes very interesting, sometimes just fun. And we did 7 years. I thought: Two or three season, max. You know we did Bigfoot, hypnosis, alien abductions, extrasensory perception, faith healing, you could name the titles in it with two hands. We did 144 episodes. We had a wonderful time.
 

What was your involvement? Did you actually go on location?
I went to very few locations. The show was engineered in such a way that they made very good use of my time. I could shoot the location stuff for five shows in one day. During the period of time that we were making that show I was doing a lot of stage work around the country. One period of time I was six months on Broadway in a production of Equus where I was starring in. About once a month or after six weeks, they would come to New York on my day off, we started of with a camera crew about 8 o'clock in the morning and we would go to maybe there'd be a grey mansion some place in the city in Manhattan. And there we'd shoot up against a wall or staircase, some story about an English ghost story on an English castle. Then, maybe in the backyard there would be some gravestones. We'd go out there and shoot a cemetery story about ghosts. And right from there we'd go over to the Hudson River and do an episode about global warming. And we'd go right from there to an Indian museum where we'd do a show about Indian faith healing, you know? We would be done with all the camera stuff for maybe five shows. The next day or two, I would go to the studio and do a narration where I was very fast at it. We could do narrations for five or six shows in a couple of hours.
 

Were you personally interested in the subject matters?
In some of them I was VERY interested in, some of them, what I call a sticks and bones show, I was not interested in. I am not an archeologist. I am not interested in something that comes out of the digs. It doesn't mean a lot to me. Some people get very excited about it, it doesn't mean a lot to me. I was very interested in extra sensual perception; I was very interested in hypnosis. I was very interested in supernatural phenomena. And occasionally we did biography kind of stories that fascinated me and I directed occasionally and had a good time.

There is one overwriting element that made In Search Of work and that was Alan Landsburg. He was a genius where the show is concerned. It was his concept, his vision and his understanding of how to treat the material that made it work and made it fun to do because the scripts always had a certain kind of angularity about them, a certain kind of interesting way of tantalizing people with the subject matter. I could be entertaining, sometimes just cheer funny, but always interesting, based on his vision of how the subject matter should be presented. And it was a grand – daddy, In Search Of was. All these reality shows, so many of them had been done along those lines. And I did have the opportunity to do a couple of shows with my own concept, although they were not typical In Search Of material. During the making of the In Search Of series I developed a one man show with myself with which I toured the United States based on the letters of Vincent van Gogh and the letters which he and his brother exchanged with each other. We still have them available for us today. And because of my involvement with the Vincent story I was asked by the producers of In Search Of to do an episode about van Gogh, an In Search Of story about Vincent van Gogh, what's the story about this man. It was a real joy. We went to France and Holland, places where he had lived and painted. I stood on the actual spot where you could identify the composition of the landscape of some of the paintings. You know this was exactly where he stood when he painted this particular picture and study his life that was fascinating. I had a great time doing it. I am very grateful for the opportunity. I did a little directing on the series, it was fun. It was a fun series to do.

Was there anything that you really discovered that you never had guessed?
I discovered that I do not like archeology and I did like the metaphysical subjects.

In 1982 you starred in the television movie A Woman Called Golda.  
Yu.

With Ingrid Bergman. Tell us about her?
I am sorry?

Talking about Ingrid Bergman, working with her.
Yu. One of our greatest film actresses ever I think. I was a big fan, she had starred in movies that I loved, particularly Casablanca, one of my favorite all time movies. I still cannot turn it off when I see it on television. I cannot turn it off, cannot walk away, it grips me so completely. And she was ill when we were doing the show. It was the last acting she ever did. It was her final performance. She played Gold Meir in the older years. The earlier years were played by Julie Davies, another wonderful, wonderful actress. And I played her husband. I played husband to both of their performances, I played, in other words: Julie Davies played the earlier scenes and Ingrid Bergman took over in the adult years and I was there for both of them as husband. They were both great talent and great to work with and I was particularly thrilled obviously working with Bergman whom I admired greatly. It was sad to know each day that she had cancer and did not have a lot of time left. It particularly effected one arm which was quite swollen, which she got to cover with the wardrobe including ruffled cuffs at the end of the sleeves to hide the swelling and I was told that she was sleeping each night with her arm elevated in a sling to help drain some of the fluid that was swelling the arm. And we got on great. I was nominated for an Emmy. 

I wanted to turn down the part several times, I did not think I can do it. It was a character again I didn't feel I was comfortable with until I was talked into doing it by Herb Bennet. Herb Bennet was the producer on some of the things I have done previously. And I am grateful to him for talking, being grateful that I had the chance to do it. I was nominated for an Emmy much to my surprise.

She won the Emmy for best performance by an actress in a television movie, Ingrid Bergman. And I spoke to her maybe five or six months after we have done the job, I was in London where she was living and I called her and we talked briefly on the phone. And she said she stopped the medication for the cancer. She said: I have stopped taking the medication, it just makes me feel sick and I don't want to take it any more. So she was taking kind of taking her fate into her own hands which I understood. She said: I want to enjoy myself as much as possible, I am on my way out to the theatre. Thanks for calling, nice talking to you, good bye. A couple of months later a phone call woke me up at about 6 o'clock in the morning: Hello, Mr. Nimoy, CPS News calling – she had passed away.         
 

In 1981 you refined your role as Mr. Spock in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. How do you feel about it?
I had very mixed feelings about it. My concern always was the writing, the writing, the writing. It is always about the writing. The last years of Star Trek the writing deteriorated badly. In the third season it deteriorated badly. I was so glad when it was over. I really was unhappy in that final season, sad. I was sad because I knew what it could be when it was well written and well produced and it wasn't either of those two things. The new producers didn't have a feeling for the show and therefore they couldn't transmit the public feeling for the writers. The script they were buying was not good Star Trek. Spock's Brain is an example. When the idea was proposed to do a new Star Trek film Oh no! Who's gonna write it? What is it? You know studios start out saying: Let's do a Star Trek movie. Well, Actors or writers start out saying: Where is the script? Studios hand out a hundred blank pages and say: Fill it. Well, you can't fill it successfully, it's a nightmare. It's a horror. And it was.

Making the first movie was very dispiriting, very depressing. We had a bad script. It never worked. It was always trouble trying to figure out how to bring some life to this project and we did our best. I never, eh, the pendulum swung completely when that first movie came along, from being an actor and character oriented Star Trek to an effects oriented Star Trek. And the feeling was: Oh, we didn't have the money before, now we have the money we are giving them an effects movie. So it was all about the ship, the ship, the ship and this effect and that effect, and now we are going through this thing, and now we are going through that thing, nothing about the characters. So it was frustrating and depressing and very painful. Right down to the last day, right down to the last day of shooting. We tried desperately to inject, occasionally they said: O. k. we shoot this idea or that idea and they cut it out of the movie. The last day around the bridge shooting the final scene of the movie we were all going to say good bye to each other, we won't come back supposedly for this mission, and now we are going back to our homes and so forth.
Kirk goes around the various characters and says. Dr. McCoy, we take you back, he'd come out of retirement or something, and he says: No, no I think I'll stay. And he came to me and said: Spock, we'll have you back on Vulcan in about a day or two; and I was supposed to say: Fine, Captain, but I am also going to stay; or so. I felt: Let's go to some fun here, we have been so somber through this entire movie, there has been no humor, no charm, which Star trek was full of: Charm and humor, full of it. So I said: If Dr. McCoy is going to stay here my staying is going to be essential. A big laugh out of the crew! Big laugh.

And then I saw a huddle with the bosses off camera, and Bob Wise, bless him, who was directing the movie, and really had said many times, he didn't have a grasp for Star Trek, came to me and said: The feeling is that's not the right tone, the movie should be a bit more serious. O. k., it was my gift to you, if you don't want it, I take it back. They wouldn't let me do it. And that's an example for the kind of frustration we had on the movie. When the movie was released for video later they put back some of the things they had cut out for the theatrical release. And behold: There was a positive response. We were getting fan mails from people saying: Wow! Now the movie makes sense because it has a little of this and a little if that. It was more fun, it was more interesting. But it was in general a frustrating experience.   

You then went on to direct Star trek III and IV, the motion pictures 
Yu. Spock died in the end of Star Trek II, Spock died, and I though that was the final Star Trek movie. And they said to me what about a death scene? And I said: Why not? That's the end of Star Trek. Let's go out in blaze and glory, saving the Enterprise, you know? Be a hero and die. (laughing) Well, of course they put in a little footage in the end of the movie that suggested that this might not be the end of Spock. And they came to me sure enough after the picture opened and did business, and they called me in for a meeting and said they would like to me to be involved with another movie. And I said I'd like to direct it. And so it started.

Were you asked to work on The Next Generation, the series?
I suggested when I was producing Star Trek VI and had hired Nicolas Meyer to write and direct it, I suggested that I do an appearance on The Next Generation television show. That would be kind of a cross over story that had something to do with the Star Trek movies that had something to do with the Star Trek movies so that we could promote each other. And they wrote a script and I acted in The Next Generation.

What about the initial idea of The Next Generation?
Well, the fact is that I was asked to produce the series. I was making Star trek IV at the time. I was in post production of Star Trek IV, I was editing Star trek IV. I got a call one day from Frank Mancuso who was running the studio at the time. I was in the editing room. And he said: Could you count out some time for me tomorrow? Yes. This is the boss, who's called me, calling about some time. (laughing) Yes, Sir. (Smiling) So I went to this meeting and there were three or four people from the television department. And he said: We are interested in doing a new Star Trek series and we'd like to know whether you'd be interested in producing it. And I said: Give me a day to think about it. If I had had 30 seconds the answer was "No". And I didn't want to do it. It is not my life, it is not my destiny. It is not my joy, my fun, my goal, my need. I didn't want to do that. So that was the extend of my involvement. It was that meeting and it was over.    

Did you think it would succeed?
I had my doubts but my doubts came from my ego, I thought: How can they do this without us? (laughing) Very well indeed, - that is the answer.

In 1987 you directed Three men and a Baby.
Yu.

How was that for you? It was a comedy.
I had a great time. It was pure joy. I was coming out from directing Star Trek III and Star Trek IV, two complicated special effects films. Time consuming, lengthy preproduction, Star Trek IV: The time they asked me to do it and the time we started shooting was two years of almost total involvement and I think that's what the picture showed that it was good. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisenberg were running Paramount when I was making Star Trek II and IV. While I was finishing IV they moved to Disney to run Disney. And because of the humor that they saw in IV I got a call from my agent who said they want you to take a look at this Project Three Men and a Baby. They needed a quick answer. It was on a Friday, they needed an answer by Monday because a director has left the project and a set under construction in Toronto. They have got a script; will you take a look at it? Well, I looked at it. On Monday I called and I said I‘d love to do it, but the script needs a total re-write from page 1. And they gave me the job, the writers were ready to go and had a vision about what it should be and I agreed with their vision.
I went to Toronto to look at the set and I thought the set was great. it was designed by Peter Larkin, a wonderful designer, I changed the size of a window and the size of a door open (shaking his head in disbelieve how little there needed to be changed) and I said: Cut a hole in this wall here, When the characters were through, we were able to track them and we were able to se them as they go by, a couple of little things like that. The décor I changed quite a bit, it was different to what I had in mind. But the set itself was wonderful. An entire apartment was the set for a sound stage. They already had Tom Selleck, Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg cast.


They had interviewed and tapes on twins, dozens of twins, that were being considered for the role of the baby. They had narrowed it down to half dozen, I looked at them at a video and asked them to bring them down to Toronto to look at them personally. I chose one set of twins that set happened to live in Toronto. They had taped kids all the way which lived in Seattle and Southern California. It was like everything fell into place like a great pie. And these guys were wonderful, the baby was perfect. Adam Greenberg was a cinematographer, he had shot A Woman Called Golda, so I knew him, we had a nice relationship. The script was being written all the time we were shooting, and it just got better and better and better and better. The script wasn't finished, we had an eight week shooting schedule. I don't think they could have been writing at all about the sixth week, it was the last couple of weeks, but for me it was an easier job than the others because there were no special effects, there wasn't all these gigantic sets to deal with and locations to deal with, so, an uncomplicated movie and fun.

And fun! The scenes just worked, worked, they guys were terrific, the story worked, a fun story.
And suddenly I had another gigantic film in my hand, in a very short time it was done.
 

Another big thing for you was in 1991 you starred in a television movie Never Forget.
I had been doing some research on another project which had been brought to me by one of my friends: Jim McGuinn who was one of the producers of In Search Of. He came to me with an idea for another project. And we were talking to a lawyer in Washington DC who had done some work on this other project that we were curious about. And during the course of those conversations he said: I am working on another case you might find interest in. And it was this case of Mel Mermelstein was a Holocaust survivor who got into a legal tangle with an organization called The Institute for historical Review, who were professional Holocaust deniers, people who said the Holocaust was a hoax, that many of these Jews who were supposedly killed by the Nazis were hiding out in various other countries under assumed names to perpetuate the hoax of the Holocaust and there was never any genocidal attempt of the Nazis, a horrible, horrible story. And he was caught up in this battle with them which became a court case in Los Angeles in 1979.
And I met Mr. Mermelstein, I became very intrigued with his story and with what had happened with him and to him and what he had done about it.
And I took on a partner, Robert Radness, who had a wonderful record in television and movies. And we took it first to NBC and they immediately said: Fine, we'll do it, let's get a script. They chose a writer. The script came in it was unshootable. We chose a writer, the script came in and we thought it is very good, and NBC said: with our blessing, take it some place, we won't do it. Management had changed at NBC, the new management was not interested in doing it. Within days we had taken it to Turner and Turner said: Yes, we'll do it. That's where it ended up. And I was asked to play the role of Mermelstein. And I think it was a great joy to do it.

What kind of response did you get?
The critical response we got was excellent. I wish we had gotten more promotion. We got minimal promotion. We did get a Cable ACE nomination for best television movie, we didn't get the award, but we got a nomination. The critical response was excellent. Critics were saying: Television which will long be remembered; Nimoy is a surprise, you know, playing this kind of character, because they hadn't seen me in that kind of work; it was very rewarding in that respect, creatively it was very rewarding.

Some else questions, something up questions.
(Leonard loudly:) Really? (laughing)

Yes (laughing).
 

Really? Something up? Down to something up now? O.k., after a couple of hours something up now.

(laughing) What are your current projects?
My current projects? I have two current projects. One is enjoying my life THOROUGHLY. Thoroughly enjoying my life, being present in my life where I am not so obsessed with work and being away. The time slips by and I am saying: Where did it go? I really have a great life and I enjoy it.

I am on the other hand very interested in photography, always have been. It's been a passion of mine since I was a kid and I love doing it. I turn out what is referred to as fine art black and white photographs. I have a body of work that I have done over the last few of years that is now culminating in a book, black and white images based on the spiritual concept of the spiritual presence, the spiritual manifestation of the feminine presence of God on this planet. And based on some Talmud writings I have been interested in. I hope to have the book out in the next few months. I shoot periodically and then spend sometime in the dark room making my prints.

And I am getting some very interesting reactions, I think it's gonna be rather thought – provoking. The subject matter: Unusual. I am doing some work with the female figure and certain iconography from Judaism, juxtaposed. That gonna be provoking. That's my major love right now and I love doing it amongst other things because I don't have to have a gigantic organization to work with.

I don't have to have a big camera crew and sound crew and electricians and set designers and costumes, make up people and other actors and producers and writers to deal with all that, studio heads and so forth. I am my studio; it's all right here in my head, very manageable. And the day I wonna shoot, I pick up my camera and an idea and I go to shoot it. I process, I develop and I end up with a product I have and I suit myself. And it doesn't take over my life. I can keep it in perspective. That's what I'm doing.

That's wonderful.
I also have a company called Alien Voices with John De Lancie who played Q on The Next Generation. We love working together; he is a very talented guy. And we do some Science Fiction projects, audio productions, radio style productions. So we go out occasionally and do this thing at Star Trek conventions once in a while for a Star Trek audience, about four times each year. That's what I am doing.

Let's talk about fame. What has fame affected you?
The most important thing is that it has given me security. Ever since Star Trek was in the air from 1966 I have never been out of work. I always had work that I could do; offers of various kinds: Theatre, television, occasional movies, writing. I have done some writing;

I have produced some poetry books and a couple of auto-biographies that sort of baffled the reading audience: Once I Am Not Spock and once that I Am Spock (laughing). I had some fun with that. 

Fame is opportunity for me, job security and opportunity.

What are the downsides for you?
To fame? There was. I don't have the problem today, but there was a time when it was oppressive to be out in public and to be constantly targeted, had difficulty having a meal in the restaurant. Had difficulty to watching a show at the theater because people were at you or whatever. But you learn to deal with that, goes with the territory. Not a compliant, it is just an observation, it's real.

What do you consider to be the highlight of your career?

There are a number of them.
I have had some highlights on stage, I have had some highlights on film, I have had some highlights as a writer, as a director, there are a number of them.

Certainly the first time I opened a letter one day and they told me that I‘ve just been nominated for any Emmy for my performance as Mr. Spock in the first season of Star Trek. I cried. I said: Wow! What a throw, what an experience! Particularly because the nominations are done by fellow actors. And I thought: They are getting it, they know, they can see what I am doing. It's an honor, a great honor to get that letter in the mail. And then, the second and third season as well, but the first time I got it, it really moved me.

Being on stage on Broadway was a great throw for me. It happened to me twice. I did a show for Otto Preminger in 1973, it was called Full Circle, with Bibi Anderson, one of the more ..?..  actresses, a wonderful actress. Not a great play, but we got through it.
In 1977 when I did Equus, that was great thrill, great play, wonderful role. Six months on Broadway with that show. It was very exciting. I was always interested in challenges,
but when I hit my strive in Star Trek IV with a story I had developed and I had great confidence in, and the movie was so well received and broke out of the Star Trek audience to a broader audience, I think the only one still that has done that, that has gone into an audience that was not on Star Trek and therefore has still got the biggest gross income of all the Star Trek movies. Great sense of satisfaction. A harking all the way back to the sixties when I wanted to direct one of the series and they wouldn't let me. I said: O. k. guys, you see? His is what I wanted to do. And then: Three Men and a Baby. Two years in a row. I had never really set out to be a director but I found myself two years in a row having movies in the top ten at the box office. Enormous! I couldn't believe it. I thought: Look, what can happen to you, you know? I did a movie that was not very much appreciated after that, I loved doing that, and I still think it is an important movie. The movie was called The Good Mother starring Liam Neeson and Diane Keaton. And they were brilliant. Jason Robards was in it and Ralph Bellamy and Theresa Wright, what a cast! It was a great thrill to make. It was a tragedy. The story is a tragedy and thereby not received well by the audience, but I was proud to make it.

My present life with my wife has turned into an experience that I never dreamed would be so fulfilling.
I have two great kids, five great grandchildren.

So, I had a good ride. (laughing)

Any regrets in your career??
Regrets about?

Taking on something..
Yeah, every once in a while I look back and say: I should have done this or I shouldn't have done that, but I don't dwell on it. I don't dwell on it.

And, believe it or not,
the last question: How would you, Leonard Nimoy, like to be remembered?

Oooh. I hate those questions: What do you want on your gravestone? (laughing)
When you're approaching the Pearly Gates what do you want to hear God say?
I hate those questions, they are impossible, impossible. How do I want to be remembered?

I'd like my family to remember me lovingly. That's enough.

Thank you very, very much, for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you. You are welcome.