In less than a month, the legendary William Shatner will celebrate his 92nd birthday. The man has been acting since the early ’50s — call it 70 years. And that’s not all he’s been doing for several decades.
According to shatnerstoupee, Shatner began wearing a hairpiece sometime between 1957 and 1958, or roughly 65 years ago. Born on 3.22.31, Shatner was somewhere between 26 and 27 when he embarked upon this follicular path. I’ve always been an admirer of well-designed wigs, and for my money Shatner’s have always looked pretty good. I just find it fascinating that he’s been toupee’d for this long…roughly 70 percent of his time on the planet earth.
HE’s favorite Shatner performances (and I haven’t chosen these to deride him — Shatner is a first-rate actor): (a) His Kirk performances in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (’82) and in Star Trek: The Voyage Home (’86); (b) Angie Dickinson‘s criminal lover in Big Bad Mama (’74), (c) The hysterical plane passenger in the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (’63), (d) Spencer Tracy‘s military aide in Judgment at Nuremberg (’61), and (e) the game show episode when he lost his temper for accidentally revealing an answer when he should’ve passed along a clue.