Leonard Simon Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931 in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). His parents left Iziaslav separately—his father first walking over the border into Poland—and reunited in the United States. His mother, Dora (née Spinner), was a homemaker, and his father, Max Nimoy, owned a barbershop in the Mattapan section of the city.

Nimoy began acting at the age of 8 in a children’s and neighborhood theater. His parents wanted him to attend college and pursue a stable career, or even learn to play the accordion—with which, his father advised, Nimoy could always make a living—but his grandfather encouraged him to become an actor. His first major role was at 17, as Ralphie in an amateur production of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! Nimoy took drama classes at Boston College and at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in the 1970s studied photography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He had an MA in Education from Antioch College, an honorary doctorate from Antioch University in Ohio, awarded for activism in Holocaust remembrance, the arts, and the environment, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Boston University.  In 1953, Nimoy enlisted in the United States Army Reserve, serving for 18 months and separating in 1955 as a sergeant. Part of Nimoy’s time in the military was spent with the Army Special Services, putting on shows which he wrote, narrated, and emceed.

Nimoy believed that playing the title role in the 1952 film Kid Monk Baroni would make him a star, but later said that “it played about three days as a second bill somewhere in Hollywood and then died.” While serving in the military the film gained a larger audience on television, and Nimoy said that after his discharge “I began to work steadily as a ‘heavy.’ I learned to use a switchblade and a gun, how to kick people, hit people, choke ’em, threaten ’em, torture ’em—all the nice things heavies do.” He played more than 50 small parts in B movies, television series such as Perry Mason and Dragnet, and serials such as Republic Pictures’ Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952). To support his family, he often did other work, such as delivering newspapers.  He played an Army sergeant in the 1954 science fiction thriller Them! and a professor in the 1958 science fiction movie The Brain Eaters, and had a role in The Balcony (1963), a film adaptation of the Jean Genet play. With Vic Morrow, he produced a 1966 version of Deathwatch, an English-language film version of Genet’s play Haute Surveillance, adapted and directed by Morrow and starring Nimoy.

On television, Nimoy appeared as “Sonarman” in two episodes of the 1957–1958 syndicated military drama The Silent Service, based on actual events of the submarine section of the United States Navy. He had guest roles in the Sea Hunt series from 1958 to 1960 and a minor role in the 1961 The Twilight Zone episode “A Quality of Mercy”. He also appeared in the syndicated Highway Patrol starring Broderick Crawford.  In 1959, Nimoy was cast as Luke Reid in the “Night of Decision” episode of the ABC/Warner Bros. western series Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston and directed by Leslie H. Martinson.

Nimoy appeared four times in ethnic roles on NBC’s Wagon Train, the No. 1 program of 1962. He portrayed Bernabe Zamora in “The Estaban Zamora Story” (1959), “Cherokee Ned” in “The Maggie Hamilton Story” (1960), Joaquin Delgado in “The Tiburcio Mendez Story” (1961) and Emeterio Vasquez in “The Baylor Crowfoot Story” (1962).  Nimoy appeared in Bonanza (1960), The Rebel (1960), Two Faces West (1961), Rawhide (1961), The Untouchables (1962), The Eleventh Hour (1962), Perry Mason (1963; playing murderer Pete Chennery in “The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe”, episode 13 of season 6), Combat! (1963, 1965), Daniel Boone, The Outer Limits (1964), The Virginian (1963–1965; first working with Star Trek co-star DeForest Kelley in “Man of Violence”, episode 14 of season 2, in 1963), Get Smart (1966) and Mission: Impossible (1969–1971). He appeared again in the 1995 Outer Limits series. He appeared in Gunsmoke in 1962 as Arnie and in 1966 as John Walking Fox.

Nimoy and Star Trek co-star William Shatner first worked together on an episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., “The Project Strigas Affair” (1964). Their characters were from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, though with his saturnine looks, Nimoy was the villain, with Shatner playing a reluctant U.N.C.L.E. recruit.  On the stage, Nimoy played the lead role in a short run of Gore Vidal’s Visit to a Small Planet in 1968 (shortly before the end of the Star Trek series) at the Pheasant Run Playhouse in St. Charles, Illinois (now closed).

Nimoy’s greatest prominence came from his role in the original Star Trek series. As the half-Vulcan, half-human Spock—a role he chose instead of one on the soap opera Peyton Place—Nimoy became a star, and the press predicted that he would “have his choice of movies or television series”. He formed a long-standing friendship with Shatner, who portrayed his commanding officer, saying of their relationship, “We were like brothers.” Star Trek was broadcast from 1966 to 1969. Nimoy earned three Emmy Award nominations for his work on the program.

He went on to reprise the Spock character in Star Trek: The Animated Series and two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. When a new Star Trek series was planned in the late 1970s, Nimoy was to be in only two out of eleven episodes, but when the show was elevated to a feature film, he agreed to reprise his role. The first six Star Trek movies feature the original Star Trek cast including Nimoy, who also directed two of the films. He played the elder Spock in the 2009 Star Trek movie and reprised the role in a brief appearance in the 2013 sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, both directed by J. J. Abrams.  Spock’s Vulcan salute became a recognized symbol of the show and was identified with him. Nimoy created the sign himself from his childhood memories of the way kohanim (Jewish priests) hold their hand when giving blessings. During an interview, he translated the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:24–26 which accompanies the sign.

Following Star Trek in 1969, Nimoy immediately joined the cast of the spy series Mission: Impossible, which was seeking a replacement for Martin Landau. Nimoy was cast in the role of Paris, an IMF agent who was an ex-magician and make-up expert, “The Great Paris”. He played the role during seasons four and five (1969–71). Nimoy had strongly been considered as part of the initial cast for the show but remained in the Spock role on Star Trek.  He co-starred with Yul Brynner and Richard Crenna in the Western movie Catlow (1971). He also had roles in two episodes of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1972 and 1973) and Columbo (1973) where he played a murderous doctor who was one of the few criminals with whom Columbo became angry. Nimoy appeared in various made for television films such as Assault on the Wayne (1970), Baffled! (1972), The Alpha Caper (1973), The Missing Are Deadly (1974), Seizure: The Story Of Kathy Morris (1980) and Marco Polo (1982). He received an Emmy Award nomination for best supporting actor for the television film A Woman Called Golda (1982), for playing the role of Morris Meyerson, Golda Meir’s husband opposite Ingrid Bergman as Golda in her final role.

In 1975, Leonard Nimoy filmed an opening introduction to Ripley’s World of the Unexplained museum located at Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Fisherman’s Wharf at San Francisco, California. In the late 1970s, he hosted and narrated the television series In Search of…, which investigated paranormal or unexplained events or subjects. He also had a memorable character part as a psychiatrist in Philip Kaufman’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  During this time, Nimoy also won acclaim for a series of stage roles. He appeared in such plays as Vincent (1981), Fiddler on the Roof, The Man in the Glass Booth, Oliver!, 6 Rms Riv Vu, Full Circle, Camelot, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The King and I, Caligula, The Four Poster, Twelfth Night, Sherlock Holmes, Equus and My Fair Lady.

After directing a few television show episodes, Nimoy started film directing in 1984 with the third installment of the film series. Nimoy would go on to direct the second most successful film (critically and financially) in the franchise after the 2009 Star Trek film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), and Three Men and a Baby, the highest grossing film of 1987. These successes made him a star director. At a press conference promoting the 2009 Star Trek movie, Nimoy made it clear that he had no further plans or ambition to direct.

In 1978, Nimoy played Dr. David Kibner in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also did occasional work as a voice actor in animated feature films, including the character of Galvatron in The Transformers: The Movie in 1986.  From 1982 to 1987 Nimoy hosted a children’s educational show Standby: Lights, Camera, Action on Nickelodeon.  Nimoy was featured as the voice-over narrator for the CBS paranormal series Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories in 1991.

In 1991, Nimoy teamed up with Robert B. Radnitz to produce a movie for TNT about a pro bono publico lawsuit brought by public interest attorney William John Cox on behalf of Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor, against a group of organizations engaged in Holocaust denial. Nimoy also played the Mermelstein role and believes: “If every project brought me the same sense of fulfillment that Never Forget did, I would truly be in paradise.”  Nimoy lent his voice as narrator to the 1994 IMAX documentary film, Destiny in Space, showcasing film-footage of space from nine Space Shuttle missions over four years time.  In 1994, Nimoy performed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Pagemaster. In 1998, he had a leading role as Mustapha Mond in the made-for-television production of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Together with John de Lancie, another ex-actor from the Star Trek series, Nimoy created Alien Voices, an audio-production venture that specializes in audio dramatizations. Among the works jointly narrated by the pair are The Time Machine, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Lost World, The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon, as well as several television specials for the Sci-Fi Channel. In an interview published on the official Star Trek website, Nimoy said that Alien Voices was discontinued because the series did not sell well enough to recoup costs.  From 1994 until 1997, Nimoy narrated the Ancient Mysteries series on A&E including “The Sacred Water of Lourdes” and “Secrets of the Romanovs”. He also appeared in advertising in the United Kingdom for the computer company Time Computers in the late 1990s. In 1997, Nimoy played the prophet Samuel, alongside Nathaniel Parker, in The Bible Collection movie David. He had a central role in Brave New World, a 1998 TV-movie version of Aldous Huxley’s novel where he played a character reminiscent of Spock in his philosophical balancing of unpredictable human qualities with the need for control. Nimoy also appeared in several popular television series—including Futurama and The Simpsons—as both himself and Spock.

Nimoy appeared in Hearts of Space program number 142 entitled “Whales Alive”.  In 1999, he voiced the narration of the English version of the Sega Dreamcast game Seaman and promoted Y2K educational films.  In 2000, he provided on-camera hosting and introductions for 45 half-hour episodes of an anthology series entitled Our 20th Century on the AEN TV Network. The series covers world news, sports, entertainment, technology, and fashion using original archive news clips from 1930 to 1975 from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and other private archival sources.  In 2001, Nimoy voiced the role of the Atlantean King Kashekim Nedakh in the Disney animated feature Atlantis: The Lost Empire which featured Michael J. Fox voicing the lead role.

In 2003, he announced his retirement from acting to concentrate on photography, but subsequently appeared in several television commercials with William Shatner for Priceline.com. He appeared in a commercial for Aleve, an arthritis pain medication, which aired during the 2006 Super Bowl.  Nimoy provided a comprehensive series of voice-overs for the 2005 computer game Civilization IV. He did the television series Next Wave where he interviewed people about technology. He was the host in the documentary film The Once and Future Griffith Observatory, currently running in the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay-Nimoy, were major supporters of the Observatory’s historic 2002–2004 expansion.

In 2007, he produced the play, Shakespeare’s Will by Canadian Playwright Vern Thiessen. The one-woman show starred Jeanmarie Simpson as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway. The production was directed by Nimoy’s wife, Susan Bay.  Nimoy was given casting approval over who would play the young Spock in the 2009 Star Trek film.  On January 6, 2009, he was interviewed by William Shatner on The Biography Channel’s Shatner’s Raw Nerve.  In May 2009, he made an appearance as the mysterious Dr. William Bell in the season finale of Fringe, which explores the existence of a parallel universe. Nimoy returned as Dr. Bell in the autumn for an extended arc, and according to Roberto Orci, co-creator of Fringe, Bell will be “the beginning of the answers to even bigger questions.” This choice led one reviewer to question if Fringe’s plot might be a homage to the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror”, which featured an alternate reality “Mirror Universe” concept and an evil version of Spock distinguished by a goatee.

In the May 9, 2009 episode of Saturday Night Live, Nimoy appeared as a surprise guest in the “Weekend Update” segment with Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, who play the young Spock and Kirk in the Star Trek that had just premiered days earlier. In the sketch, Quinto and Pine attempt to appease long-time Trekkers by assuring them that the new film would be true to the original Star Trek. When the two indicated that they had been the target of harassment and threats by Trekkers, Nimoy appeared, assuring them that fans would enjoy the new film. When host Seth Myers surmised that Nimoy was about to say that to not do so would be illogical, Nimoy stated, “No, I was going to say was to not like it would make them dickheads.”  In 2009 he voiced the part of “The Zarn”, an Altrusian, in the television-based movie Land of the Lost, starring Will Ferrell.

Nimoy was also a frequent and popular reader for “Selected Shorts”, an ongoing series of programs at Symphony Space in New York City (that also tours around the country) which features actors, and sometimes authors, reading works of short fiction. The programs are broadcast on radio and available on websites through Public Radio International, National Public Radio and WNYC radio. Nimoy was honored by Symphony Space with the renaming of the Thalia Theater as the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater.  Nimoy also provided voiceovers for the Star Trek Online massive multiplayer online game, released in February 2010, as well as Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep as Master Xehanort, the series’ leading villain. Tetsuya Nomura, the director of Birth by Sleep, stated that he chose Nimoy for the role specifically because of his role as Spock.

In April 2010, Leonard Nimoy announced that he was retiring from playing Spock, citing both his advanced age and the desire to give Zachary Quinto the opportunity to enjoy full media attention with the Spock character. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep was to be his final performance. However, in February 2011, he announced his definite plan to return to Fringe and reprise his role as William Bell. His retirement from acting did not include voice acting, as his appearance in the third season of Fringe includes his voice (his character appears only in animated scenes), and he provided the voice of Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. In May 2011, Nimoy made a cameo appearance in the alternate version music video of Bruno Mars’ “The Lazy Song”. Aaron Bay-Schuck, the Atlantic Records executive who signed Bruno Mars to the label, is Nimoy’s stepson. Nimoy provided the voice of Spock as a guest star in a Season 5 episode of the CBS sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. The episode is titled “The Transporter Malfunction” and aired on March 29, 2012. In 2012, Nimoy reprised his role of William Bell in Fringe, in the fourth season episodes “Letters of Transit” and “Brave New World” parts 1 & 2. Nimoy reprised his role as Master Xehanort in the 2012 video game Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. On August 30, 2012, Nimoy narrated a satirical segment about Mitt Romney’s life on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In 2013, Nimoy reprised his role as Spock Prime in a cameo appearance in the film Star Trek Into Darkness.

Nimoy had long been active in the Jewish community. He could speak and read Yiddish, his first language. In 1997, he narrated the documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, about the various sects of Hasidic Orthodox Jews. In October 2002, Nimoy published The Shekhina Project, a photographic study exploring the feminine aspect of God’s presence, inspired by Kabbalah. Reactions have varied from enthusiastic support to open condemnation. Nimoy said that objections to Shekhina did not bother or surprise him, but he smarted at the stridency of the Orthodox protests, and was “saddened at the attempt to control thought”.  Nimoy was married twice. In 1954, he married actress Sandra Zober (1927–2011), whom he divorced in 1987. On New Year’s Day of 1989, he married actress Susan Bay, cousin of director Michael Bay.  In a 2001 DVD, Nimoy revealed that he became an alcoholic while working on Star Trek and ended up in drug rehabilitation. William Shatner, in his 2008 book Up Till Now: The Autobiography, spoke about how later in their lives, Nimoy tried to help Shatner’s alcoholic wife, Nerine Kidd.

Nimoy has said that the character of Spock, which he played twelve to fourteen hours a day, five days a week, influenced his personality in private life. Each weekend during the original run of the series, he would be in character throughout Saturday and into Sunday, behaving more like Spock than himself: more logical, more rational, more thoughtful, less emotional and finding a calm in every situation. It was only on Sunday in the early afternoon that Spock’s influence on his behavior would fade off and he would feel more himself again – only to start the cycle over again on Monday morning. Years after the show he wrote that “To this day, I sense Vulcan speech patterns, Vulcan social attitudes and even Vulcan patterns of logic and emotional suppression in my behavior.”  Nimoy was a private pilot and had owned an airplane. The Space Foundation named Nimoy as the recipient of the 2010 Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award for creating a positive role model that inspired untold numbers of viewers to learn more about the universe.  In 2009, Nimoy was honored by his childhood hometown when the Office of Mayor Thomas Menino proclaimed the date of November 14, 2009, as Leonard Nimoy Day in the City of Boston.

Nimoy’s interest in photography began in childhood; until his death in 2015, he owned a camera that he rebuilt at the age of 13. His photography studies at UCLA occurred after Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, when Nimoy seriously considered changing careers. His work has been exhibited at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.  Nimoy made his directorial debut in 1973, with the “Death on a Barge” segment for an episode of Night Gallery during its final season. It was not until the early 1980s that Nimoy resumed directing on a consistent basis, ranging from television shows to motion pictures. Nimoy directed Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in 1984 and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986. He also directed the 1987 film Three Men and a Baby. His final directorial credit was in 1995 for the episode “Killshot”, the pilot for the television series Deadly Games.

Nimoy authored two volumes of autobiography. The first was called I Am Not Spock (1975) and was controversial, as many fans incorrectly assumed that Nimoy was distancing himself from the Spock character. In the book, Nimoy conducts dialogues between himself and Spock. The contents of this first autobiography also touched on a self-proclaimed “identity crisis” that seemed to haunt Nimoy throughout his career. It also related to an apparent love/hate relationship with the character of Spock and the Trek franchise.

The second volume, I Am Spock (1995), saw Nimoy communicating that he finally realized his years of portraying the Spock character had led to a much greater identification between the fictional character and himself. Nimoy had much input into how Spock would act in certain situations, and conversely, Nimoy’s contemplation of how Spock acted gave him cause to think about things in a way that he never would have thought if he had not portrayed the character. As such, in this autobiography Nimoy maintains that in some meaningful sense he has merged with Spock while at the same time maintaining the distance between fact and fiction.

Nimoy also composed several volumes of poetry, some published along with a number of his photographs. A later poetic volume entitled A Lifetime of Love: Poems on the Passages of Life was published in 2002. His poetry can be found in the Contemporary Poets index of The HyperTexts. Nimoy adapted and starred in the one-man play Vincent (1981), based on the play Van Gogh (1979) by Phillip Stephens.  In 1995, Nimoy was involved in the production of Primortals, a comic book series published by Tekno Comix about first contact with aliens, which had arisen from a discussion he had with Isaac Asimov. There was a novelization by Steve Perry.

During and following Star Trek, Nimoy also released five albums of musical vocal recordings on Dot Records. On his first album Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, and half of his second album Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy, science fiction-themed songs are featured where Nimoy sings as Spock. On his final three albums, he sings popular folk songs of the era and cover versions of popular songs, such as “Proud Mary” and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line”. There are also several songs on the later albums that were written or co-written by Nimoy.  Nimoy’s voice appeared in sampled form on a song by the pop band Information Society in the late Eighties. The song, “What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy)” (released in 1988), reached No. 3 on the US Pop charts, and No. 1 on the Dance charts. The group’s self-titled LP contains several other samples from the original Star Trek television series.  Nimoy played the part of the chauffeur in the 1985 music video of The Bangles’ cover version of “Going Down to Liverpool”. He also appeared in the alternate music video for the song “The Lazy Song” by pop artist Bruno Mars.

In February 2014, Nimoy revealed that he had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a condition he attributed to a smoking habit he had given up approximately 30 years prior. On February 19, 2015, Nimoy was taken to UCLA Medical Center for chest pain and had been in and out of hospitals for the “past several months.”  Nimoy died on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83 in his Bel Air home from complications of COPD. A few days before his death, Nimoy shared some of his poetry on social media website Twitter: “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP”.  On Twitter, William Shatner wrote of his friend, “I loved him like a brother. … We will all miss his humor, his talent, and his capacity to love.” George Takei stated, “The word extraordinary is often overused, but I think it’s really appropriate for Leonard. He was an extraordinarily talented man, but he was also a very decent human being.”