10 Actors Who Begged For Their TV Characters To Die

8. Denise Crosby - Star Trek: The Next Generation

Why She Wanted To Die

Denise Crosby played the Enterprise's chief of security Tasha Yar in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but requested to be killed off at the end of the season after expressing dissatisfaction with her character's minimal character development.

Crosby said, "I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show. I was dying. This was not an overnight decision. I was grateful to have made that many episodes, but I didn’t want to spend the next six years going 'Aye, aye, captain,' and standing there, in the same uniform, in the same position on the bridge. It just scared the hell out of me that this was what I was going to be doing for the next X-amount of years."

The actress left the show on good terms and eventually returned for some scattered guest roles on the show in later years, though her career outside of Trek never really took flight.

Given that TNG enjoyed a major uptick in quality after its rough first season, it's a shame she didn't tough it out for a little while longer, especially as Yar was a compelling character in her own right.

How It Happened

While Yar is on manoeuvres on a remote planet, she's attacked by an alien entity known as Armus, who kills her instantly with a psychokinetic blast. Yar's death remains disdained by most fans to this day, and with damn good reason.