10 Star Trek Actors Who Suffered From Typecasting

Well, he did basically write two books about it. As a title, I Am Not Spock caused a fair amount of backlash from press and fans alike who thought that Nimoy was trying to disassociate himself from the character. The nerve! Nimoy, who came to regret the title, then famously went on to 'rectify' things with his second memoir I Am Spock in 1995.

The fact is, he needn't really have written the second in the first place. I Am Not… already does the work of I Am… as Nimoy underscores it in …Not Spock: "The question is, without Spock, who am I? Do I, or would I, exist at all without him? And without me, who is he?" Of course, Nimoy wasn't actually Spock, but at that point, no one else was Spock either.

I Am Not… and not I Am… also contains within it the performative I play(ed), and most importantly here, They cast… but the distinction matters little. The indissociable link between actor and role had already been forged by the power of Star Trek and its fandom, gaining extraordinary momentum at the time of publication of I Am Not Spock in 1975. Privately, Nimoy was the character, even greeted as such. Professionally, 'Mr. Spock' was always on stage.

Nimoy did play other roles in TV, film, and theatre to great success, so it would be difficult to argue that his career truly suffered as a result of Star Trek. In the end, however, he could never escape the ontology of Spock. Like many of his Trek co-stars on this list, Nimoy experienced the ultimate form of typecasting — he got the role both in and for life.