Leonard Nimoy, Trek's Spock, dies

Talents many, but role dominated

Leonard Nimoy, famous as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, announced last year that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to years of smoking.
Leonard Nimoy, famous as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, announced last year that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which he attributed to years of smoking.

Correction: Actor Leonard Nimoy’s first autobiography, I Am Not Spock, was published in 1975. This obituary for the actor that appeared in Saturday’s editions misstated the year the book was published.

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut Star Trek, died Friday. He was 83.

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AP

Flowers adorn the Hollywood Walk of Fame star of Leonard Nimoy in Los Angeles Friday, Feb. 27, 2015. Nimoy, famous for playing officer Mr. Spock in Star Trek died Friday, Feb. 27, 2015 in Los Angeles of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

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AP

Former Beverly Hills greeter Gregg Donovan, center, pays his respects at the Hollywood Walk of Fame star of actor Leonard Nimoy in Los Angeles, Friday, Feb. 27, 2015.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed that he died at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Nimoy announced he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

His artistic pursuits -- poetry, photography and music in addition to acting -- were far-ranging, but it was as Mr. Spock that Nimoy became a folk hero, bringing to life one of the most indelible characters of the last half-century: a cerebral, unflappable, pointy-eared Vulcan with a signature salute and salutation: "Live long and prosper."

Nimoy developed what he later admitted was a mystical identification with Spock, the lone alien on the starship's bridge. Yet he also acknowledged ambivalence about being tethered to the character, expressing it most plainly in the titles of two autobiographies: I Am Not Spock, published in 1977, and I Am Spock, published in 1995.

Star Trek, which had its premiere on NBC on Sept. 8, 1966, made Nimoy a star. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the franchise, called him "the conscience of Star Trek" -- an often earnest, sometimes campy show that employed the distant future to take on social issues of the 1960s.

Although the series was canceled after three seasons because of low ratings, a cultlike following coalesced soon after Star Trek went into syndication. The fans' devotion only deepened when Star Trek was spun off into an animated show, various new series and an uneven parade of movies starring much of the original television cast.

When director J.J. Abrams revived the Star Trek film franchise in 2009 with an all-new cast, he included a part for Nimoy, as an older version of the same character. Nimoy also appeared in the 2013 follow-up, Star Trek Into Darkness.

Nimoy's zeal to entertain and enlighten reached beyond Star Trek and crossed genres. He had a starring role in the dramatic television series Mission: Impossible from 1969-71 and later in life played the recurring role of Dr. William Bell on the science-fiction series Fringe from 2009-12. He also directed television shows and movies.

He frequently performed onstage, as well, notably as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. His poetry was voluminous, and he published books of his photography. He made records, singing pop songs as well as original songs about Star Trek, and gave spoken-word performances -- to the delight of his fans and the bewilderment of critics.

Born in Boston on March 26, 1931, Leonard Simon Nimoy was the second son of Max and Dora Nimoy, Ukrainian immigrants and Orthodox Jews. His father worked as a barber.

From the age of 8, he acted in local productions, winning parts at a community college, where he performed through his high school years. In 1949, after taking a summer course at Boston College, he traveled to Hollywood, though it wasn't until 1951 that he landed small parts in two movies, Queen for a Day and Rhubarb.

He continued to be cast in little-known movies, although he did presciently play an alien invader in a cult serial called Zombies of the Stratosphere, and in 1961 had a minor role on an episode of The Twilight Zone. His first starring movie role came in 1952 with Kid Monk Baroni, in which he played a disfigured Italian street-gang leader who becomes a boxer.

Nimoy served in the Army for two years, rising to sergeant and spending 18 months at Fort McPherson in Georgia, where he presided over shows for the Army's Special Services branch.

He later achieved wide visibility in the late 1950s and early 1960s on television shows like Wagon Train, Rawhide and Perry Mason. Then came Star Trek.

Nimoy directed two of the Star Trek movies, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), which he helped write. In 1991, the same year that he resurrected Spock on two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Nimoy was also the executive producer and a writer of the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

He also directed the hugely successful comedy Three Men and a Baby (1987), a far cry from his science-fiction work, and appeared in made-for-television movies.

He received an Emmy nomination for the 1982 movie A Woman Called Golda, in which he portrayed the husband of Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel, who was played by Ingrid Bergman. It was the fourth Emmy nomination of his career -- the other three were for his Star Trek work -- although he never won.

Nimoy returned to college in his 40s and earned a master's degree in Spanish from Antioch University Austin, an affiliate of Antioch College in Ohio, in 1978. Antioch University later awarded Nimoy an honorary doctorate.

Nimoy's marriage to actress Sandi Zober ended in divorce, and he later married Susan Bay. He is survived by Bay; his children, Adam and Julie Nimoy; a stepson, Aaron Bay Schuck; six grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and an older brother, Melvin.

In his later years, Nimoy rediscovered his Jewish heritage, and in 1991 he produced and starred in Never Forget, a television movie based on the story of a Holocaust survivor who sued a neo-Nazi organization of Holocaust deniers.

In 2002, having illustrated his books of poetry with his photographs, Nimoy published Shekhina, a book devoted to photography with a Jewish theme, that of the feminine aspect of God. His black-and-white photographs of nude and seminude women struck some Orthodox Jewish leaders as heretical, but Nimoy asserted that his work was consistent with the teaching of the kabbalah.

His religious upbringing also influenced the characterization of Spock. The character's split-fingered salute, he often explained, had been his idea: He based it on the kohanic blessing, a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God.

"To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior," Nimoy wrote years after the original series ended.

But that wasn't such a bad thing, he discovered.

"Given the choice," he wrote, "if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock."

Information for this article was contributed by Daniel E. Slotnik and Peter Keepnews of The New York Times.

A Section on 02/28/2015

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