Jeffery Hunter was a movie star before he was Captain Pike so he was obviously in a lot of things. Flipping through the channels one night I came across the movie * Hell to Eternity* in which Hunter is horribly miscast as a Mexican American. He plays Guy Gabaldon a Marine hero who is credited with getting 2,000 Japanese to surrender. He learned Japanese when he was taken in as a boy by a Japanese family. His “brother” was played by a 23 year old George Takei. Not a great movie but an interesting story.
Nimoy was in an episode of a series called Frontier Circus (1961–62), which I don’t ever remember seeing but was apparently created by Samuel A Peeples (who wrote the second ***TOS ***pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”) and counted Dorothy “DC” Fontana among its writers. Looking at the cast list, I see a number of actors who would later appear on Star Trek:
Nichelle Nichols got her first featured role on Gene Roddenberry’s series The Lieutenant. Gary Lockwood (“Lt Cdr Gary Mitchell” in the second pilot) was the star of the series. Check out its cast list too:
Nana Visitor was also on an episode of Night Court. She played a mental hospital escapee who lived her life as though they were scenes in movies. Of course, Dan tried to seduce her, but unknown to him she was trying to kill him. Nana was very good in it! It’s called “Educating Rhoda” and is from season six, episode five.
Here’s a clip:
When you start looking into TV guest stars back in the '60s and '70s, it turns out everybody was in everything.
Kathie Browne (Wink of an Eye), Sherry Jackson (What Are Little Girls Made Of?), Diana Muldaur (Is There in Truth No Beauty? and Return to Tomorrow), and Arlene Martel (Amok Time) were all in episodes of “The Rockford Files”.
Rudy Solari (“Salish” in “The Paradise Syndrome”) was “Casino” in the post-Combat! Dirty Dozen–ripoff Garrison’s Gorillas.
Oh, and Barbara Babcock (multiple eps, notably Plato’s Stepchildren).
I also saw her once on McGyver:
So was Mariette Hartley.
Colm Meaney starred in The Commitments, The Snapper, and The Van, plus appears in John Houston’s final film, The Dead. All worth seeing.
Kathie Browne can also be seen in the final episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, as one of those cops so aggravated by Kolchak’s investigations into supernatural goings-on.
Extra fun: Darren McGavin and Kathie Browne were husband and wife. And the plot of this episode more-than-slightly resembles Trek’s Devil in the Dark.
And he was hilarious. Seeing the portraits of Elvis and the Pope side-by-side on the living room wall was priceless! “*He *said that?!?” :dubious:
He was in the first episode of the revived Mission: Impossible (filmed in Australia) back in the ‘80s. They were forced to recycle old scripts because of a writers’ strike, so he played the role of the hitman that Robert Conrad had in the original M:I.
Robert Picardo (the EMH on Voyager) has bit part in “Back To School” (he plays one of the guys Rodney Dangerfield’s wife is cheating with) - that movie also features Terry Farrell (of DS9 of course) in a major role. Picardo is also the deadly hitman in “Innerspace” which is in retrospect, hilarious.
The film version of To Kill a Mockingbird features four future Star Trek actors.
The two most obvious:
Brock Peters (Joseph Sisko, Ben’s father, from DS9) plays Tom Robinson, the defendant.
William Windom (Commodore Decker from the “Doomsday Machine” episode of TOS–the only man ever to give Shatner a run for his money in the scenery-chewing department) plays Mr. Gilmer, the prosecutor.
Less obvious:
Paul Fix (Dr. Piper from the second TOS pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”) plays Judge Taylor.
And John Megna (the weirdest looking of all the kids in “Miri”) plays Dill.
Antoinette Bower (Sylvia, “Catspaw”) was in a Charles Bronson movie, “The Evil That Men Do.”
The first thing I saw Shatner in post-Trek was a TVM of “Hound of the Baskervilles,” where He dies in quicksand at the end.
William (Dr. Daystrom) Marshall was in the movie, “Amazon Women on the Moon,” playing a video pirate (Arrrrrrrrr!).
I remember him as the sheriff in the “cursed/haunted house” (Halloween?) episode of CSI: NY.
“Back to School,” had Sally Kellerman in it.
She’s also the nagging wife whom Dick Van Dyke shoots and fakes a kidnapping for in his Columbo episode.
As well as this 1972 classic: