At 79 years of age, the actor most famous for playing half human-half Vulcan Mr Spock, says he plans to stop acting and stop making appearances at Sci Fi Conventions. I’m guessing he wants to spend more time taking photos of naked fat women.
I remember seeing an interview with Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR’s Car Talk and they were asked when they would retire. Retire? they said in mock horror. We only work one hour a week now! I kind of feel the same way about Leonard Nimoy, what, exactly, is he retiring from? Of course, he would know best when it’s time to bow out.
I saw Leonard Nimoy at a book signing one time, I even took his photo and he smiled for the picture-though I was later told that I was not supposed to stick a camera in the man’s face. I do recall that he took a lot of breaks at this book signing.
During my Nerd Years I saw Leonard give a speech about Star Trek 4, the one where they go back in time and save the whales. He gave a lecture on directing and acting and while he spoke he ran a video of clips from the film. We were all Star Trek fans, not film students, so we didn’t really care that much about Leonard’s insights on special effects and the dangers of making science fiction films.
At one point we all laughed at one of the funny scenes in the film. Leonard looked at the scene and explained that he wasn’t really in a tank with a whale, that wasn’t a real whale, they really weren’t at an aquarium when they shot the scene and so on and so forth. The kind of stuff that you hear on the Extra Commentaries of virtually every DVD made in the last ten years.
“It’s called acting.” Leonard Nimoy said as he tried to get our attention back to whatever it was he was saying. It was fun to be in the presence of Leonard Nimoy, but he knew that it was Spock that we were really interested in.
I really love the William Bell bits of Fringe, but then, all of Fringe is wonderfully weird. I don’t do Sci Fi Cons any more, but it is a bit sad that others will not have the chance to be scolded by Leonard that it’s just a job and none of it is real. He says that he will continue to take photographs, so maybe I’ll see him at another book signing sometime.
