William Shatner has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Governor General's Performing Arts. Their official praise reads as follows:
William Shatner is one of Canada’s most celebrated cultural icons. In a wide-ranging career spanning six decades, he has recreated himself many times over, each time revealing a new alter ego who seems to completely define him for the moment. Famous for his roles as Captain James Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series and attorney Denny Crane on The Practice and Boston Legal, he has starred in five TV series (Star Trek, T.J. Hooker, The Practice, Boston Legal, andThird Rock from the Sun) and more than 30 films, including Judgment at Nuremberg, seven Star Trek movies, Airplane II: The Sequel, andMiss Congeniality. He is an award-winning actor, accomplished director, best-selling author, and dedicated philanthropist and environmentalist whose compassion, creativity, and irrepressible sense of humour are integral to his life and work.
He has written fiction and non-fiction, released several albums, made close to 100 guest appearances on TV, and raised millions of dollars for charity. He currently hosts three TV series (Aftermath, Shatner’s Raw Nerve, and Weird or What?) and several websites, and plays the irascible father on the hit show $#*! My Dad Says and the dramatically persuasive “Negotiator” for the discount travel site priceline.com. He is also working on an album, a book, and an autobiographical documentary. “I’m an actor, a performer,” he says. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I love to entertain, to make people laugh and cry. I love to create the vehicles to do that, or at least to contribute to that.”
Mr. Shatner was born in Montreal in 1931 and obtained a BA in Commerce from McGill University, where he acted in student theatre and radio productions. In the late 1950s he appeared at the Stratford Festival and on Broadway, and made his film debut in The Brothers Karamazov (1957).
Now if you head on over to The National Post you can read a short Q&A. Hightlights from the interview include:
--Shatner's completed five chapters of his latest book (Shatner's Rules), which he calls "an autobiography, a continuation of Up Till Now."
--He's recently completed four interviews for Aftermath. One of which is with Daniel Ellsberg of The Pentagon Papers fame (who was portrayed by Boston Legal stalwart James Spader in an early FX TV Movie) and one with Jeffery Wigand, the tobacco industry whistleblower portrayed by Russell Crowe in The Insider.
--Best Shatner Quote: "I'm probably happiest right now then I've ever been in my life...I'm surfing the giant life wave!"
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