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Leonard Nimoy

Nimoy, Spock shared an intellectual curiosity

Bill Keveney
USA TODAY
Leonard Nimoy shared characteristics with Spock, but he was so much more than his 'Star Trek' character.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Leonard Nimoy a few years ago at his house in tony Bel Air.

Nimoy, the iconic Spock of Star Trek who died Friday at 83, was back in the media spotlight in his late 70s, appearing as the famous Vulcan in J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of Trek and as a guest star in Fox's Fringe, which had its own cult sci-fi following.

I remember feeling a bit intimidated, perhaps conflating Nimoy with Spock's forbidding intellect and stoicism. I did not want to be the fool he had to suffer.

The man I met, however, was smiling and gracious, talking about his "good friend" William Shatner, Capt. James T. Kirk to Nimoy's Spock on the U.S.S. Enterprise, with a hearty chuckle. That's something the half-human Spock, who once said he was insulted by Captain Kirk's observation that he was becoming "more human," would never have done.

Nimoy seemed to get a kick out of the very different Shatner. I dare say he may have found him fascinating. (From my own interviews with both men, however brief, I could see elements of their Trek characters in each of them. I have a couple of fun memories of man-of-action Shatner from a profile years ago, but that's another story.)

What Nimoy did share with Spock was an imposing intellect and a curiosity about the world, reflected by his interest in an array of pursuits besides acting. He was proud of his contemporary art collection, which he had acquired with his wife, Susan Bay Nimoy. They also shared a philanthropic commitment to scientific exploration, including astronomy.

Acting, by that time, had taken a backseat to photography, his "creative outlet" for the previous two decades. A side room in the well-appointed but hardly extravagant home served as a studio of sorts for Nimoy's work, with a number of his photographs on the walls.

A substantial portion of his photography work focused on women. He mentioned Shekinah, a Hebrew word that he described as "the feminine aspect of God." Already, I was feeling like a Trek redshirt on this particular intellectual voyage.

One of his photography shows was called Secret Selves, an exploration of identity that must have had deeper meaning for an actor so inextricably linked to one character.

Nimoy, who once wrote a memoir called I Am Not Spock, appeared to have had an evolving relationship with the pointy-eared Vulcan over the decades. I've interviewed a number of talented actors who have had their desire to portray a range of people snuffed out because they are so associated with one role. Some have had to make peace with forever facing the same questions about one particular character (e.g., Shatner's famous Star Trek convention scene on Saturday Night Live.). I'm guessing Nimoy had some of that ambivalence.

By the time of our interview, Nimoy had embraced Spock. "I feel a sense of ownership in the same way a grandfather feels about his grandchildren. I have a blood connection," he said.

He was pleased when Trek director J.J. Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman approached him about revisiting Spock in the 2009 film.

"They had an appreciation of the Spock character, who I felt had been somewhat neglected for some time," he said. "In fact, in the last film that Bill Shatner did, along with the rest of the original crew, Spock wasn't even included." (He said Shatner, who was not in the new film, called to say: "Now, we're even.")

Nimoy, who directed two of the Star Trek films in the 1980s (including the one that resurrected his character), went on to reprise Spock Prime, as he was then called, in a 2013 follow-up film. He wasn't surprised about the longevity of the "optimistic' franchise or the character.

"You know, Star Trek and Spock have gone through a lot of resurrections," Nimoy said in 2009. "We were canceled at the end of the second season, revived for a third season by audience demand. They put us on for another year and then we were canceled. For 11 years, there was no Star Trek production and I certainly thought it was over. And then along comes Star Trek: The Motion Picture. When that was finished, I thought, 'Well, that takes care of that.' And then here comes Star Trek II, in which Spock died, and I thought that's the end of that. And it certainly wasn't."

It certainly wasn't. Nimoy lived long. His famous character will live on. And, as a result, our culture — film, television, photography, science — has prospered.

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