Star Trek Interviews (8) - Profile of Mark Lenard/Sarek Taken from the Public Domain Apart from DeForest Kelley's brief cameo appearance in Encounter at Farpoint as an ageing Doctor McCoy, Mark Lenard is the only actor to continue his Star Trek role forward into the 24th Century. First seen on screen in the 1966 adventure Balance of Terror, in which he played the commander of a Romulan ship, Lenard went on to portray Mr Spock's Vulcan father, ambassador Sarek. Many years later he completed his 'alien trilogy' in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, playing the captain of a Klingon cruiser which is destroyed by the V'Ger craft - death by blue sparkles! Since then he has had the opportunity to recreate the role of Sarek in two movies and in The Next Generation. Lenard grew up in a small town in Michigan, attending a small one-room schoolhouse with all the grades in a single classroom. "I do remember being in a couple of shows there, and at high school I was a speaker in oratorial contests and little plays. My mother wanted me to be a professional man, A lawyer or something that she thought was respectable, and would make a good living - and acting certainly wasn't that!" "I was always interested in history, and international affairs and so forth, so I studied for the foreign service (I've been playing ambassadors ever since... and I thought I'd dropped all that!). Eventually I decided to become a writer, went to Europe and got mixed up in a couple of plays. I had a loud voice and a lot of enthusiasm - I didn't know what the hell I was doing!" "I gave up acting several times to write, but I always had to start working again because I found acting was where I could make a little money! I still have commissions for a couple of books about myself, and about Star Trek. For thirty years I have been threatening to do this, so time is running short. Even though Vulcans are supposed to have a lifespan of 250 years, by The Next Generation I'm getting there. I think I'd like to get back and do more (Star Trek movies), then I'll be getting younger again!" From drama school, Lenard went to New York, but life was tough. "In order to make ends meet you had to work all day long - 10 til 6 rehearsing and taping television, then stagger over to get a bite to eat and then do a play in the evening. They did a lot of taped shows - like The Three Musketeers and The Prisoner of Zenda and I also did The Power and the Glory with Lawrence Olivier. "Eventually I reached a plateau - I did well in the theatre and I was know as... not quite a star, but as a 'distinguished New York actor'. Then I went to Hollywood, where they didn't give a damn! They just wanted to know if you were good looking!" After being considered, and ultimately turned down, for the part of Professor Carter in The Man Trap, Lenard landed his first Star Trek role as the Romulan commander in Balance of Terror. "I thought I'd found the promised land. There were two spaceships, but I never even saw the people from the other spaceship until the following year. I was in every scene, and everything was shot in sequence. It was a great part, and I made about three or four times more than I had ever made before." However this wasn't necessarily the start of the proverbial gravy-train. "I did a Mission: Impossible, also for Desilu, and then I sat for four and a half months without a job - with two little daughters, a wife and two cats - waiting for something to happen." When he accepted the role of Sarek, Spock's Vulcan father, did he have any inkling of what he was letting himself in for? "No, not the slightest idea. Nowadays, I'm kind of used to it - but I couldn't believe it when I first started getting all this fan mail, because to me it was just another show. I did two shows; they were good scripts, but that's all I did on the series - and suddenly for a while I was getting more fan mail than anybody else in the show. Spock was so popular, and such a cult figure, and when they brought his parents in - especially a full Vulcan - it captured the imagination." Lenard almost had another Star Trek role in the third series tale The Savage Curtain - surprisingly not as the Vulcan statesman Surak, but rather in the more down to earth role of Abraham Lincoln. "I was doing the Here Comes The Brides series and we had a hiatus at Christmas time. I went in and read (for The Savage Curtain), and they wanted me to do it... I jumped at it - but we couldn't work it in. They needed six or seven days, and I only had four so I couldn't do it - otherwise I would have played a third role in the series." Lenard became involved with Science Fiction again when he played Urko, the militaristic gorilla, in the Planet of the Apes TV series. "They said 'forget about eating for the next five years.' You had to take milkshakes, but I discovered when they moulded these pieces to your face that you could eat all kinds of things. At first I had to sit in front of a mirror when I ate, so I knew where I was putting the food!" "They used spirit gum - it's most uncomfortable; it itches, it gets hot, and it burns. It's tough on your face, but it's flexible and it holds. In that heat you have to have a kind of serene emotional quality to be able to handle that. They had movie actors who would leap up out of their chairs in the middle of make-up and rip it off because they got claustrophobia." "It was a long, hard day and I never got home before 9.30 at night because I'd go to my dressing room and scrub myself down. You had to have your teeth blacked out because they would show behind the ape's teeth which were out front. At first they used to make up our hands and stick the hairs on, but later they made some silk gloves with the hair already in place which you could just slip on." The trials of the make-up schedule must have proved useful for his next Star Trek character - the Klingon commander in the first motion picture. This role required Lenard to have another full-head cast taken, which was a traumatic experience as the studio were using inexperienced make-up artists for the job! The third and fourth films called for the return of Sarek, for which Lenard was a little unsure as to how the audiences after fifteen years. He need not have worried, as both his character and the films themselves were great successes, and indirectly resulted in Paramount's approval for the new TV series. When Gene Roddenberry approached Mark Lenard with a view to doing an episode of Next Generation, it didn't come completely out of the blue. "Gene had been talking about it for a year and a half. He said 'Well, Vulcans age very slowly', but the reason he put everything ahead about 89 years was that he didn't want any of the people from the other show in it - he wanted to be sure they (the characters!) were all dead. Of course De Kelley, who was a friend of his, managed to sneak in there as an ancient mariner of some sort, but none of the others. I guess he's mellowed a little over the years and decided maybe they could use some." About a year and a half after the idea was first mooted, Mark Lenard was at a party with some of the production team and they discussed the concept further. "After about three weeks they called, and said 'Are you available to do a script called Sarek?' They came up with a really good script; Sarek is now a legend, all the Earth people he knew are gone, and those that are living only know him by reputation. He also has a new wife, another Earth woman. Although I think Gene Roddenberry probably didn't want it originally, there is a kind of mad reference to Spock, but only in passing. I understand they have a script for Lenard Nimoy as Spock, but he wanted a million dollars, so they settled for somewhat less and got me!" Mark Lenard and Leonard Nimoy are strikingly similar in appearance, and it's easy to see why the producers first cast the pair as father and son - even though their respective ages are far closer in real life. "I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard when somebody called to me from a car 'Are you Leonard Nimoy?' and I said 'I'm his father!' The guy drove off, then came back and said 'Sorry, but did you say you were Leonard Nimoy's father, or Spock's father?'." Does Mark find much time these days for live theatrical work? "I do as much as I can - or as much as I have time for. Well, I appear at conventions - that's live, and I've been doing that for years! I've also done a couple of plays recently - last year I did The Beast, and a play called Actors with Walter Koenig. We're working on a new play called The Boys in Autumn - it's about Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, seeing what bizarre things may have happened to them in their middle age. I had mixed feelings about it, but the audience seem to love it!" "I also do voice-overs, and I'm trying to make that my bread-and-butter job - I've got a good account lately for Saab cars - that's the kind of thing that keeps you independent so that you can do what you please." Hopefully, what pleases Mark Lenard will also please his fans - perhaps an appearance in the next Star Trek film, or maybe further adventures in the 24th Century in the fourth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. - o -