Feb. 27--Overnight, but more often over a mysterious, unmeasurable unit of time, a signature role can turn into a typecasting albatross, even as it sets the course for an actor's destiny and financial fortunes.
Did anyone of his television generation know that better than Leonard Nimoy? The long, tall actor with the instantly identifiable voice of reasoned authority died Friday in Bel Air, Calif., at the age of 83. Nimoy wrote two autobiographies in his lifetime. The first, published in 1975, was called "I Am Not Spock," a reminder to "Star Trek" fans the world over, and more than a few casting directors in Hollywood, that the beloved Vulcan was not he. And he was not that Vulcan.
As a college student in 1979, I saw Nimoy onstage at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in a one-man touring show, "Vincent," in which he played Van Gogh's brother Theo. What I remember of that evening said a lot more about me than it did about Nimoy, or his talent. It was nearly impossible, for an hour at least, simply to get the Vulcanized Nimoy out of my head and take the performance -- a very good one -- at face value.
"I Am Not Spock" came out four years before the first of the "Star Trek" movies. In the second and best of those films, "The Wrath of Khan," the culminating heartbreaker of a scene between Nimoy and William Shatner was moving enough to turn "Star Trek" ambivalents like myself into true believers. Watch that scene again. You'll swear Nimoy is doing some sort of mind-meld trick on his usually hammy and mannered co-star in order to turn him into a different, more honest actor. At least temporarily.
Nimoy came back as Spock Prime for the rebooted "Star Trek" franchise, in appearances that served as the least necessary reminder in movie franchise history: This was the real Spock, the ur-Spock, the witty, minimalist embodiment of all that is logical and aspirational and purposeful in the universe.
After directing two of the earlier "Star Trek" pictures, to great popular success, Nimoy made "Three Men and a Baby" with Tom Selleck, Ted Danson and Steve Guttenberg -- another big hit. Nimoy then made a handful more, less successfully, though he acted extensively for many more years. While the title of his first autobiography cheekily addressed the typecasting problem, by the time he wrote his second, Nimoy had come to a different arrangement with his signature role. "Star Trek" was a gift, an annuity, a pop culture polestar. He gave his follow-up autobiography the only truly logical title: "I Am Spock."
mjphillips@tribpub.com
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