George Takei

Template:Realworld

Actor George Takei
File:Sulu2266.jpg
Image:	Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Gender:	Male
Date of Birth:	20 April 1937
File:Takei old.jpg

George Hosato Takei ("Ta-KAY", born 20 April 1937, age 86) played Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series. He has reprised the role in the first six motion pictures, and "Flashback", an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In Star Trek: The Animated Series, he provided the voice of Sulu, and also displayed his vocal talents playing other guest characters. In 1973, while the animated series was on the air, Takei ran for and narrowly lost a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. It was decided that while the campaign was going on, it would be unfair for Takei's likeness (but not necessarily his voice) to appear each week on television, which is why he "appears" in many animated episodes as someone other than Sulu.

He has both narrated and recorded dialogue as Sulu in numerous audio novels and interactive games. Due to the fact that Sulu did not appear in the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", Takei was the only Original Series star to not appear in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 30th anniversary episode "Trials and Tribble-ations". However, this was made up for when he appeared on Star Trek: Voyager's 30th anniversary episode "Flashback".

In 1942, Takei – then a small child – and his family were interned by the United States at a relocation camp in Arkansas, along with many other Japanese-Americans.

Takei has been with his partner, Brad Altman, since 1988, whom he met at a gay and lesbian running and walking club.

On 28 October 2005, Takei decided to publicly "come out of the closet" as gay, though this had been an open secret for some time. The story was widely reported in the media and was hailed by LGBT communities as a positive step for the larger gay community as well as for Star Trek.

On 9 January 2006, Takei was named the official announcer of the Howard Stern Show. Takei will portray Sulu again in the Star Trek fan-produced series Star Trek: New Voyages later in 2006.

Takei also appeared on the sitcom Scrubs as an unnamed preacher resembling himself in the episode "My Best Friend's Wedding." He also has a recurring role on the NBC series Heroes (alongside Malcolm McDowell), playing Kaito Nakamura – whose car's license plate, coincidentally, is NCC-1701.

Credits

As Hikaru Sulu

• TOS:
  • "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
  • "The Corbomite Maneuver"
  • "Mudd's Women"
  • "The Enemy Within"
  • "The Man Trap"
  • "The Naked Time"
  • "Balance of Terror"
  • "The Galileo Seven"
  • "Shore Leave"
  • "The Squire of Gothos"
  • "Arena"
  • "Tomorrow is Yesterday"
  • "The Return of the Archons"
  • "This Side of Paradise"
  • "Errand of Mercy"
  • "The City on the Edge of Forever"
  • "Operation -- Annihilate!"
  • "Catspaw"
  • "Metamorphosis"
  • "Friday's Child"
  • "Who Mourns for Adonais?"
  • "Amok Time"
  • "The Doomsday Machine"
  • "Wolf in the Fold"
  • "The Changeling"
  • "Mirror, Mirror"
  • "The Deadly Years"
  • "I, Mudd"
  • "Return to Tomorrow"
  • "The Ultimate Computer"
  • "The Omega Glory"
  • "Assignment: Earth"
  • "Elaan of Troyius"
  • "The Paradise Syndrome"
  • "The Enterprise Incident"
  • "And the Children Shall Lead"
  • "Spock's Brain"
  • "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"
  • "The Empath"
  • "The Tholian Web"
  • "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
  • "Day of the Dove"
  • "Wink of an Eye"
  • "That Which Survives"
  • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"
  • "Whom Gods Destroy"
  • "The Mark of Gideon"
  • "The Lights of Zetar"
  • "The Way to Eden"
  • "The Savage Curtain"
  • "Turnabout Intruder"
• TAS:
  • "Beyond the Farthest Star"
  • "One of Our Planets Is Missing"
  • "The Lorelei Signal"
  • "More Tribbles, More Troubles"
  • "The Survivor"
  • "The Infinite Vulcan"
  • "The Magicks of Megas-Tu"
  • "Once Upon a Planet"
  • "Mudd's Passion"
  • "The Terratin Incident"
  • "The Time Trap"
  • "The Slaver Weapon"
  • "The Eye of the Beholder"
  • "The Jihad"
  • "The Pirates of Orion"
  • "Bem"
  • "The Practical Joker"
  • "Albatross"
  • "The Counter-Clock Incident"
• Star Trek films:
  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
  • Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
  • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
  • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• VOY: "Flashback"

As other characters

• Hikaru Sulu (mirror) in TOS: "Mirror, Mirror"
• Kuri in TAS: "The Time Trap"
• A Klingon crewman in TAS: "The Pirates of Orion"
• The USS Huron helmsman in TAS: "The Pirates of Orion"

Other media

• George Takei also appeared in the game, Star Trek: Shattered Universe.

• Takei played Captain Sulu in a trilogy of audio productions:
  • Transformations
  • Cacophony
  • Envoy

Books

• To the Stars
• Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe

Filmography

• Walk Don't Run (1966, with Samantha Eggar and Miko Mayama)
• The Green Berets (also starred John Wayne; Takei starred as a South Vietnamese captain)
• Oblivion (1994) and Oblivion 2: Backlash (1996, with Carel Struycken, Musetta Vander, and Peter David; Takei played "Doc" Valentine, a campy send-up of Leonard McCoy)

External links

• George Takei - official website
• George Takei - MySpace webpage
• George Takei at Wikipedia
• Template:IMDb-link
• George Takei interview at BBC - May 2006
• George Takei at TriviaTribute.com - pictures, links and trivia