William Shatner

Shatner trained classically at Montreal's McGill University before building a career in Canadian and American theater and television through the 1950s and 60s, including a prominent stint at Ontario's Stratford Festival performing Shakespeare.

He returned to the captain's chair a decade after the TV series ended, anchoring the franchise's leap to the big screen with the same clipped, theatrical urgency fans knew from television. A classically trained Canadian stage actor before his television breakout, he continued playing Captain Kirk across six feature films.

He became one of the most recognizable and parodied performers in science fiction as a result, and his career has spanned television, film, music and best-selling memoir over more than six decades.