15 Actors Who Have Regretted Being On Star Trek

Getting a role on a show in the Trekverse, especially a recurring one, can be a huge boost for an actor’s career. The prestige of joining one of the most successful television/movie franchises in history can open doors that were previously closed.

It also means thatStar Trekfans will likely remember an actor for years after their shows’ end, resulting in opportunities for appearances at conventions, video game voiceovers, and guest roles on other shows or movies within the franchise.

It’s not surprising, then, that most actors who’ve had Star Trek roles today have no regrets about their hitches in the Starfleet service, since it can be the gift that keeps on giving.

However, some actors have voiced regrets about aspects of their Trek roles that they found burdensome or challenging.

For example, there were some actors who experienced the sheer physical misery of long hours spent with synthetic prosthetic makeup attached to their faces or bodies, and others who were disappointed because their roles never developed satisfactorily.

Additionally, some female cast members felt marginalized in a world where scripts where written to appeal to the franchise’s heavily male fan base.

Also, perhaps most regretfully of all, there were those who felt that their personal identities were being subsumed into their characters’ public identities.

Pour a glass of Romulan Ale, because it’s time to find out about the 15 Actors Who Regretted Being On Star Trek.

15. Leonard Nimoy

Star Trek: The Original Series lifted the late Leonard Nimoy into the pop culture stratosphere for his portrayal of the beloved Vulcan first mate, Mr. Spock.

Spock opened doors for Nimoy that he could have only dreamed of when he was a struggling actor chasing guest roles on popular shows of the early ’60s, like The Man From Uncle. For the first time, after he joined TOS, he saw his name permanently marked on his dressing room door, instead of chalked in. 

However, after TOS ended in 1969, Nimoy was stressed by the way fans confused him with his famous alter ego.

He wrote about it in his first autobiography, provocatively entitled I Am Not Spock, which was published in 1975. Quoting the autobiography, a Los Angeles Times article notes that Nimoy wrote: “I went through a definite identity crisis.”

However, as Star Trek transitioned successfully to the big screen, Nimoy embraced his famous character, and wrote a second autobiography called I Am Spock.

He later told MTV that I Am Not Spock was misconstrued by the public as an attack on the revered Vulcan character, based on just one chapter in the book

About his final feelings regarding his role as Spock, Nimoy stated: “The question was whether to embrace Mr. Spock or to fight the onslaught of public interest. I realize now that I really had no choice in the matter.”

Leonard Nimoy passed away on February 27, 2015, much mourned by his huge international fan base. He truly did live long and prosper.

 Jeri Ryan

When Jeri Ryan joined the cast of Star Trek: Voyager at the beginning of the fourth season, she probably had no idea that her character, Seven of Nine, would become hugely popular.

This turned out to be something of a problem for Ryan.

The more popular Seven got, the more some of the original cast members felt sidelined, Ryan said on a podcast with Aisha Taylor a few years ago (via TrekCore).

“When the new kid comes in and suddenly it’s all about them. That was tough, and it was particularly tough for some more than others, which was not real fun. It really made it an unpleasant work experience,” Ryan stated.

One main cast member in particular seemed to resent the attention given to Seven of Nine, although Ryan declined to identify that person.

“It was really, really tough the first couple of years, and there were many days when I was nauseous before going into work because it was that miserable,” Ryan said.

Things eventually got better for Ryan, thankfully. Despite the initial misery of her first two seasons, Voyager opened the door for many other opportunities after the series ended.

After Voyager ended, she quickly garnered recurring roles on the series Boston Public, Shark, and most recently, Bosch.

While Ryan will probably always be best known as Seven of Nine, she seems to have escaped the typecasting that some other beloved Star Trek actors experienced.

Denise Crosby

As Security Chief Tasha Yar, Denise Crosby was one of the original main cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Bored with her role, she left before the completion of the first season, and Yar was cut off in the infamous TNG episode, “Skin of Evil”.

Crosby told StarTrek,“I was miserable. I couldn’t wait to get off that show… 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.”

While today, she’s proud and grateful to have been an original cast member of TNG, Crosby also noted that she had no regrets about leaving the show, which later proved to be an enduring hit that lasted seven seasons.

“I’d been in acting school dreaming of playing all kinds of different things,” she said.

However, she pointed out, there was no animosity between her and producer Gene Roddenberry, and she returned in guest roles in later seasons of TNG. This included playing Tasha Yar’s half-Romulan daughter, Sela.

After leaving TNG, Crosby did feature films, most notably the horror classic Pet Sematary, and lots of television guest roles. Her most recent recurring role was in the Showtime series, Ray Donovan.

Teri Garr

Quirky character actress Teri Garr is best known today for her roles in enduring ’70s classic movies like Young Frankenstein and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

For hardcore fans of Star Trek: The Original Series, however, she’s also known for her role as Roberta Lincoln, a ditzy blonde secretary who gets caught up in a time-traveling plot involving the Starship Enterprise and 1968 Earth.

The third season episode in which Garr appeared, called “Assignment: Earth”, was intended to be the pilot for another series that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was trying to get off the ground.

Only 20 at the time the episode was filmed, Garr had an unpleasant experience on set, although she hasn’t provided a lot of details as to why her role was so taxing.

According to an interview that appeared in Starlog magazine in 1990, which is quoted on StarTrek, Garr did not enjoy her role on TOS.

“I did that years ago and I mostly deny I ever did it,” Garr stated.

She said that she was also glad the planned new Roddenberry series based on the episode was never made, because “otherwise, all I would get would be Star Trek questions for the rest of my natural life—and probably my unnatural life. You ever see those people who are Star Trek fans? The same people who go to swap meets.”

Star Trek apparently just wasn’t Teri Garr’s cup of Romulan ale.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Today, Jeffrey Dean Morgan enjoys a huge fan base from his role as Negan on The Walking Dead. He is also a fan favorite for his previous roles on Supernatural and Grey’s Anatomy, and for his big screen role as Comedian in Watchmen.

However, back in 2003, he was just another struggling actor hustling for whatever roles he could get, including guest spots on shows like Angel and CSI: CrimeScene Investigation.

That year, he appeared in “Carpenter Street”, the eleventh episode of the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Playing a Xindi-Reptilian alien who time-travels and terrorizes 21st Century Detroit, his role required an extreme amount of uncomfortable prostheses and makeup to transform Morgan into a scaly, reptilian creature.

In a 2012 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he recalled his time on Enterprise: “I had to pay my bills. I knew I’d play some guy saying some stuff. Then I got a call saying I needed to go in for a prosthetic fitting. I remember them dripping goop on my face, and I had straws sticking out of my nose. I couldn’t eat lunch. I was claustrophobic. I’d go home in tears.”

The experience was so unpleasant that he added: “This was the job that made me want to quit acting.”

Morgan may have been grateful for the money at the time, but he definitely regretted the experience of carrying around all that junk on his body.

These days, the only thing he has to carry around on set is Lucille.

John Billingsley

As a dependable character actor for decades, John Billingsley has had prominent recurring roles on HBO’s True Blood, the CBS series Intelligence, and the ABC Family show, Stitchers.

However, by far his most famous role was playing Dr. Phlox, the Denobulan Chief Medical Officer, on Star Trek: Enterprise for four seasons in the early and mid-2000s.

In an interview with Syfy, Billingsley admitted to having “mixed feelings” about the show’s cancellation in 2005.

On the one hand, he was grateful for a chance to join what he calls an “incredible, long-established family.” On the other hand, he found the prostheses and makeup he had to wear tiresome.

“It becomes very wearying to wear a rubber head,” he said.

A bigger regret for Billingsley was the fact that Enterprise was never as popular as the other franchise shows that preceded it.

He told Syfy that he was “tempered somewhat by the fact that in the eyes of many fans, Enterprise was, and I joke, ‘The show that [destroyed] the franchise.’ Not for all. Some people dug it. Some people totally did not dig it.”

Billingsley believes that the show could have been more popular— and longer running– if it had spent more time in development, but the production company, Paramount, pushed the producers hard for a quick replacement after Star Trek: Voyager ended.

Malcolm McDowell

British actor Malcolm McDowell has been an A-List star since he burst onto the movie scene almost a half-century ago, in the explosive role of Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s landmark movie, A Clockwork Orange.

McDowell mostly enjoyed his role as the villainous Soran in the movie Star Trek: Generations (1994), which united the casts of Star Trek: TOS and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

However, he didn’t enjoy the threats that he got from angry Trek fans because Soran ultimately ends the life of Captain James T. Kirk near the end of the movie.

“I [destroyed] Captain Kirk and I got… threats. And some of them were in Klingon,” he told the Los Angeles Times a few years ago.

Threats aside, McDowell does have one other huge regret about playing Soran: the way that Kirk— probably the most famous television character in history— met his end.

The scene takes place on a rickety iron bridge across a deep ravine. Soran blasts the bridge and weakens it, and then eventually Kirk falls with the bridge and is crushed under its wreckage.

“They gave him [Kirk] such a lousy sendoff. I mean, what a cheesy move. He falls off a bridge; I shoot the bridge and he falls,” McDowel said. “That’s the best thing they could come up with?” McDowell does have a point— Kirk deserved to go out with a nice, big photon torpedo bang.

Susanna Thompson

Susanna Thompson is probably familiar to most viewers today as Moira Queen on the CW series Arrow or Carol Preston on the NBC series Timeless.

She’s also appeared in big screen movies, most notably the Tom Shadyac-directed movie Dragonfly (2002), opposite Kevin Costner, and the critically acclaimed late ’90s series, Once and Again.

Also in the late ’90s, she played the Borg Queen on four episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. She had previously essayed guest roles on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Ultimately, her role as Borg Queen proved very satisfying in career and artistic terms.

However, the makeup, contact lenses, and prostheses that she had to wear made Thompson nearly quit the part after just one day of shooting.

In commentary for the DVD  for the fifth season of Voyager, via Fandom, Thompson stated: “The first night after my first day of filming, which was, I think, twenty hours, I cried myself to sleep.”

She continued: “And said I didn’t care how much money they paid me, I wouldn’t do it again! But I came back and I finished out that episode and then indeed I did I came back again.”

Eventually, Thompson asked for more breaks between shoots, which helped her deal with the uncomfortable costuming for three more episodes.

Part of her makeup included contact lenses that had pieces of metal embedded in them, which became unendurable after hours of wear. Now that’s dedication.

Grace Lee Whitney

As a former nightclub and band singer, the late Grace Lee Whitney built herself a tidy career acting in guest roles on popular television shows of the ’60s, such as Death Valley Days, The Virginian, and 77 Sunset Strip.

Her only recurring role was as Yeoman Janice Rand on Star Trek: The Original Series. Unfortunately, her role on TOS lasted only for eight episodes, when she abruptly left the show, after experiencing an assault by a television executive who she declined to name.

The story of Whitney’s assault was included in her autobiography, entitled The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, which contained a forward by Leonard Nimoy.

Long after leaving TOS, according to Whitney’s son Jonathan Dweck, she made peace with her painful experience and embraced her role as Yeoman Rand, which Star Trek fans had never forgotten.

“Over time, she became appreciative of her short time on Star Trek because she developed meaningful relationships with the fans, Leonard Nimoy, and other cast members,” he said after his mother passed away in 2015.

Whitney appeared at Star Trek conventions and played the role of Janice Rand (who was promoted to Commander) in several of the big screen Star Trek movies of the ’80s. She also played Rand in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Though she obvious regrets the assault, in her book she described Star Trek as “something wonderful and exciting.”

 Garrett Wang

As the son of Chinese immigrants from Riverside, California, Garrett Wang had just one on-screen role on his résumé before he landed the recurring part of Ensign Harry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager.

He would stay with the hit show until the end of its seven-year run.

However, Wang had mixed feelings about the way his role developed.

For one thing, he greatly regretted that his character seemed to stay in the same place throughout the show’s run, as he told StarTrek: “During the fourth season, I called writer/producer Brannon Braga and asked him why my character hadn’t received a promotion yet.” Wang said that he was told, “Well, somebody’s gotta be the ensign.”

He also asked for the chance to direct an episode, but was turned down.

“I was the first actor in Star Trek history to be denied the chance to direct,” Wang stated. “The irony of the situation was that, unlike my predecessors, who only wanted to direct for the sake of directing and acquiring their DGA cards, I was the only one who wanted to direct Trek and make it the best it could be.”

He continued: “This missed opportunity has haunted me ever since.”

He took a break after the show ended and accepted only a few roles in the 2000s, mainly because he “got jaded with the industry.”

However, Wang returned to regular acting in the 2010s, with roles in television movies and guest spots. As of this writing, he has four upcoming projects listed on his IMDb page.

Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton joined the cast of Star Trek: TNG when he was only 15, playing Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher, the hyper-genius teen-age son of Dr. Beverly Crusher.

Before TNG, he was an up-and-coming child actor who garnered positive critical attention for his work, especially for his role as Gordie Lachance in the hit Rob Reiner movie, Stand By Me.

He stayed with TNG for 85 episodes, but walked away from his recurring role before the series ended.

While Wheaton doesn’t regret his time on TNG, he does have regrets about the way his character was developed, he said in an interview with CNET, “I was a teenager, and as we got into the third season, I felt like the writers just didn’t know what to do with my character, and more often than not I didn’t feel challenged as an actor and I kind of felt like part of the furniture.”

Wheaton has also had to deal with the fall-out of playing one of the least popular characters in the entire history of the Star Trek franchise, which he found “very hurtful.”

The problem, in his view, was that TNG’s writers didn’t write his character in a way that older fans found “relatable.”

“I think the writers could have navigated around that and made him more relatable, instead of like an idea, but they had a hard time overcoming a lot of that stuff,” Wheaton stated.

Wheaton’s acting career never seemed to fully recover after leaving TNG, but he’s had a recurring roles on The Big Bang Theory (playing himself), and other shows, along with many guest appearances on popular shows.

Robert Beltran

For seven seasons on Star Trek: Voyager, Robert Beltran played First Officer Chakotay, the first Native American character to have a main, recurring role in the Trekverse.

While stating that he was happy for the paycheck, Beltran wasn’t shy about speaking out when he thought things were going askew within the Star Trek universe. After all, he once referred to the sacred Prime Directive as “fascist c**p” in an interview with CNET.

One of his biggest regrets about the show was that Chakotay never quite developed the way he him to wanted, especially after Jeri Ryan joined the cast as fan-favorite Seven of Nine and Brannon Braga joined the production team.

In an interview with StarTrek, he stated: “I guess when Brannon Braga took over, when the Seven of Nine character made her entrance, the focus changed.”

He continued: “That was fine with me, but I think writers have an obligation to fill out all the characters if they’re regular characters on a series. I think several of the characters were diminished – Chakotay and Tuvok and Kim and Neelix.”

“I think it was just easier for these new writers that came on to write stories about the captain and about characters that weren’t really human, like Seven of Nine and the Doctor,” Beltran said.

Since Voyager ended, Beltran has made Star Trek-related appearances and garnered roles in feature movies. He also acted in a recurring role on the 2000s HBO series, Big Love.

Robert Picardo

As the nameless, holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, long-time character actor Robert Picardo became one of the most popular cast members of the long-running show, something which Picardo now appreciates very much.

That wasn’t how he envisioned the Doctor part playing out in the beginning, however.

At the time, he regretted that his role seemed to be so small and unpromising.

In fact, he had originally auditioned for the role of Neelix, a character who turned out to be unpopular with many fans and was ultimately played by Ethan Phillips.

In an interview with StarTrek a few years ago, Picardo said that he had “little to do” in the two-hour pilot episode for Voyager, called “Caretaker”.

“I remember, when I first got the role, I was telling everybody, ‘I got the new Star Trek pilot. I’m sure it’ll run. I’m sure it’ll put my kids through college. But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got the worst part on the show,’” Picardo stated.

Nowadays, Picardo finds the “irony” of his initial impression that he was the one regular cast member who drew the shortest stick funny.

As the Doctor’s popularity grew and grew, so did the character’s story lines, and Picardo’s character evolved to have romantic entanglements, become an opera singer, write a novel, and finally, give himself a name.

After Voyager was cancelled, Picardo played Richard Woolsley on Stargate: Atlantis and had another recurring role in the mini-series Morganville.

He has also done numerous guest roles in shows like The Orville, Grey’s Anatomy, and Lucifer.

2. Gates McFadden

Gates McFadden was an original cast member of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She played Chief Medical Officer Dr. Beverly Crusher in all but the second season of the show’s seven-year run.

While McFadden loved her role as Crusher, the first season was reportedly tough, mainly because of clashes with the head TNG writer, Michael Hurley, as she told StarTrek.

She also regretted that many of her ideas about the development of Crusher’s character were rejected by producers.

She felt that this occurred because she was a woman, stating: “I didn’t feel particularly that they were receptive to a female walking in and telling them about a great script idea. That was number one.”

McFadden continued: “Maybe I am wrong. A woman can’t just walk into the producer’s office and throw her feet up on the couch and say ‘hey let’s just hang a minute’ and ‘how about this?’ Maybe you can now, but you sure couldn’t then.”

When the first season ended, she wasn’t asked back, and was replaced with Diana Muldaur as Dr. Kate Pulaski in the second season.

The Pulaski character, however, proved unpopular with fans, and Hurley also left the show in the third season. McFadden thus returned as Crusher and stayed until the show ended in 1994.

After TNG was finally cancelled, she reprised her role as Crusher in four TNG movies.

She also founded her own Los Angeles-based theatre company and did guest roles on various shows, such as playing Allison Rourke in a four-part story arc on the ’90s hit series, Mad About You.

Brent Spiner

Brent Spiner played one of the most beloved characters on Star Trek: The Next Generation as the unemotional and unflappable android, Lt. Commander Data, throughout the show’s seven-year run.

He later reprised his role as Data in three Star Trek: TNG movies and four episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.

His logical, calm, and scientifically inclined character was often compared to that of Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series.

Unfortunately, like Nimoy before him, Spiner became so identified with his character that it became a problem for him, both personally and professionally.

While emphasizing that he appreciated his prominent place in the franchise, Spiner once voiced his regrets about that in an interview with Vice.

“Sometimes I think it limited me in ways I wished it hadn’t, but I realize I don’t have any control over that… The only thing that bothers me— and it happens all the time— is when people see me and shout, ‘DATA! DATA!’ I’m fine with people recognizing me. I just wish they shouted, ‘Guy who played Data,’” Spiner stated.

Referring to Nimoy’s infamous first autobiography, I Am Not Spock, where Nimoy partially explored his Trek-related identity crisis, Spiner once joked that he was planning to call his own autobiography I Am Not Spock, Either.

Since leaving TNG, he’s had his own Youtube series, Fresh Hell, and recurring roles on the television series Threshold, Wherehouse 13, and Outcast. He’s also had featured roles in big screen movies, most notably in Roland Emerich’s Independence Day and Martin Scorcese’s The Aviator.

Can you think of any other Star Trek actors who regretted some aspect of their roles? Sound off in the comments!