Leonard Nimoy, who won over an obsessive fan-base as the half-human, logic-bound first officer of the Starship Enterprise on TV and film’s sci-fi titan “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 83 years old.
His wife and daughter confirmed that his death was the result of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
While it was his role as Spock that forever immortalized him as an icon of the science fiction and fantasy communities, Nimoy’s artistic passions and pursuits extended far beyond the world of the United Federation of Planets. Indeed, to some degree, his poetry, photography and musical endeavors, which were often critically acclaimed in their own right, seemed constantly overshadowed by his time as the cerebral and pointy eared Vulcan, a reality that Nimoy struggled to comes to terms with over the course of his 62-year career. The titles of his two autobiographies, 1975’s “I Am Not Spock” and 1995’s “I Am Spock,” seem to especially illustrate this struggle.
While his inability to escape the role may simply have been a result of how truly indelible and powerful his performance as Spock was, many of the features the character is associated with were in fact Nimoy’s.
What stuck out most to audiences about Spock, besides the pointed-Vulcan ears, varies from person to person. It may have been his voice, thick and resonant, as if it sounded from some cavernous depth more deep and grand than could have been housed in a human chest. Perhaps it was the cheek bones, angular and strong, which lent them the appearance of having been whittled and hardened by time, enough for him to have gained the knowledge that defined his character. Perhaps it was his proud posture and serious demeanor. All of these things were definitely Nimoy. Even the character’s iconic Vulcan Salute was a kohanic blessing, a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter shin, which is the first letter in Shaddai, one of the Hebrew names for God. All these aspects of the character were instances of the man behind the ears’ true self shining through.
These were traits that won him the role, but also that endeared him to multiple generations of “trekkies,” or “trekkers” as Nimoy preferred. However, those who worked with the actor, including Zachary Quinto, who took up the role of Spock in the franchise’s original cast reboot in 2009, have come out in the wake of Nimoy’s death to remind the world that he was much more.
“The first thing that I really took note of with Leonard was his sense of humor. Those who had certain expectations were often surprised by how funny he was. Wise man that he was, he never took anything too seriously, yet he was a very serious man,” said Quinto in a recent interview with The Guardian.
This ability to navigate more intellectually and socially heavy territory was indeed a gift of Nimoy’s. In 1991, he produced and starred in “Never Forget,” a made-for-TV movie in which he played a Holocaust survivor who sued a neo-Nazi group of Holocaust deniers. In his book of photographs “Shekhina,” published in 2002, Nimoy dealt with the theme of feminine aspects of the Jewish notion of God. Most recently, his 2007 photo-collection, “The Full Body Project,” addressed issues of body image and featured nude and semi-nude images of more “full-bodied” women and leaders of what was known as the “fat acceptance” movement.
Nimoy was not just an artist, but a friend to the arts, particularly here at UCLA. He and his wife Susan Bay Nimoy have been members of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA for many years, as well as avid supporters of the center’s Artist in Residence and Artist Fellow programs. Nimoy was also scheduled to speak at Royce Hall on April 10. The event was called “Mapping an Artist’s Journey” and was to take the form of an extended interview with UCLA’s Kristy Edmunds, the director of CAP. From April 17 to 19, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance will present Nimoy’s “Vincent,” an intimate play concerned with the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh. The part of “Vincent,” which Nimoy performed himself throughout the late 1970s will be played by acclaimed French actor Jean-Michel Richaud.
While at times he might have felt too closely bound to his space-traveling alter ego, Nimoy seemed to have grown to love and accept that inescapable side of himself.
“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 in an essay published in “Extraterrestrial Intelligence: The First Encounter,” years after the original series ended and unaware that he would ever be asked to reprise the role of Spock.
“Given the choice,” Nimoy wrote, “if I had to be someone else, I would be Spock.”