William Shatner was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the son of Anna (née Garmaise) and Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer. His paternal grandfather, Wolf Schattner, shortened the family name to "Shatner". Shatner's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Hungary, and Shatner was raised in Conservative Judaism. He attended Willingdon Elementary School, in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Read more...

Trained as a classical Shakespearean actor, Shatner performed at the Shakespearean Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario. He played a range of Shakespearean roles at the Stratford Festival in productions that included Shakespeare's Henry V and Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great. Shatner made his Broadway debut in the latter. In 1954, he was cast as Ranger Bill on the Canadian version of Read more...

Shatner was first cast as Captain James T. Kirk for the second pilot of Star Trek, entitled "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He was subsequently contracted to play Kirk for the Star Trek series and held the role from 1966 to 1969. In the episode Operation Annihilate he also played the corpse of the recently killed George Samuel Kirk (the brother of James T. Kirk).

In 1973, Shatner returned Read more...