William Shatner helped take audiences where no man had gone before in Star Trek: The Original Series. And according to the fan-favorite actor, that journey to playing Captain James Kirk was inspired by some pretty Shakespearean methods.
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During a panel at this year’s Star Trek Las Vegas, Shatner recently addressed the techniques he brought to his early performance as Kirk. One particular method – dubbed ‘the look of eagles’ – affected his physical stature on the series.
“I was a trained classical actor.” Shatner explained. “And the thing about heroes in Shakespeare is they are known. They are kings. They stand in a certain way. They speak. The phrase I heard was ‘the look of eagles’ so you are always looking either to the horizon to see if the enemy is coming or into the future. There is something about being a hero that puts your shoulders back.”
According to Shatner, this training went hand-in-hand with his and Gene Roddenberry‘s initial character creation of Kirk.
“So when I came to Star Trek and I [talked] to [creator] Gene Roddenberry,” Shatner revealed, “he said to read the books of Horatio Hornblower and I read them and he was just an ordinary captain, but he had his eye on the horizon. Because in those days you didn’t know if a strange animal would swallow the ship. And Captain Kirk had the same problem. ‘I wonder if there is a strange animal that is going to swallow the Enterprise.’ So I played it like a classical hero and that gave me a little advantage.”
Judging by the warm response Shatner has received since his days on Trek, his use of ‘the look of eagles’ has definitely paid off. Just don’t ask Shatner why he didn’t end up lending those talents to the Star Trek reboot films.
[h/t: TrekMovie]
