10 Star Trek Actors Who Suffered From Typecasting

Sadly, given the man's flair for his craft, James Doohan is one of the most emblematic cases on this list. He became so intimately associated with the Enterprise engineer that he struggled to find other roles. In 1992, Doohan gave a presentation at NASA, and answered a question from the audience about a possible return to Star Trek as follows:

I'm really making a concentrated effort to do characters far away from doing one with an accent or certainly one with a Scottish accent. Because I have been typecast, and it is absolutely deadly. […] That happened to me, seriously, by 1971. […] For the next five years, I didn’t' work in the business at all, and that is deadly.

Evidently affected by the situation, it was, according to The Washington Post, advice from an unexpected source in 1973 that convinced Doohan to embrace the Star Trek association. As Doohan's dentist told him, "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."

From 1973-1974, Doohan lent his voice to Star Trek: The Animated Series, and then later appeared in seven of the Star Trek movies, plus a most memorable episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was also a stalwart of the convention circuit and gave lectures at numerous universities (42 in 1977 alone, as he stated during his NASA presentation). He even lampooned himself as Scotty in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1. Doohan might never have broken free of the Star Trek mould, but we are forever grateful for the one character he played so brilliantly, and for that time he went to the dentist!