Mark Lenard was a character actor on TV. He played Spock’s father on Star Trek. In fact, he was the first person to play all 3 main Star Trek aliens: Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon. He never got a chance to play a human, though. Not on Star Trek. Of course in most other shows he played a human. In fact, almost all his roles were human. Except he played a gorilla, General Urko, on the live action Planet of the Apes TV show.
I got a chance once to get his autograph. I figured I had the opportunity to ask him 1 question. I didn’t want to waste it. If it was a good one, one he’d never heard before, maybe he’d call up his agent and tell him, “Hey, I’ve got a guy you gotta talk to…”
All I could come up with was, “On Planet of the Apes, when they had you riding horses, did the horses treat you any different when you wore the ape makeup?”
I thought that was a pretty good question. It showed that I was familiar with his work, but wasn’t trying to brown-nose him. I wasn’t asking him to try to remember some random factoid that only a geek would appreciate. Everyone likes horses.
He said no.
