While many actors achieve long and distinguished careers over many pivotal moments in them, Leonard Nimoy has managed to achieve just as long and distinguished a career over one pivotal role in particular: being Mr. Spock. The actor, of course, is best known for playing the half-human/half-alien Starfleet science officer on the original Star Trek and six of the subsequent Star Trek films. However, Nimoy has managed to parlay his success with Mr. Spock into many different avenues including stage work, voice acting, filmmaking, music, writing, and poetry. Now the 78 year-old actor has donned the famous pointy alien ears once again as a much older and wiser Mr. Spock in J.J. Abrams’s new film version of the legendary science-fiction TV classic. Leonard recounted to us the feeling of revisiting the hallowed Star Trek universe once again for the first time in 18 years for this new film. “I felt very flattered to be called for this film because I admire the talent of the people making it,” Nimoy says, “And I had put Star Trek behind me, quite comfortably, coming to terms with the fact that we’re whole sets of new people, making the Star Trek product, and acting in the Star Trek product, but when these people came along and told me their feelings about Star Trek and specifically the Spock character, I felt validated, I felt that they got it, they got it, they were on the same page that I was, with Star Trek and the character.” “And we said simply that they would write the script and I would read it with an open mind and I did and I found it very exciting,” he continues, “I think what’s very unusual about this movie is that J.J. Abrams has a talent for a very, very large-scale film, as well as very, very personal moments within the heart of it. And not a lot of directors can do that, some can do one, some can do the other. Not a lot can do both as well as he has done with this movie. I think it’s a great accomplishment.” He also explained for us what he felt was different about the Mr. Spock he plays in this new film versus the character he played on the original TV series. “The aspect of Spock that I played in this movie is much more resolved,” Leonard explains, “The issue of a balance between logic and emotion is resolved for him as it has been for me in my own personal life. I know by instinct now that how to deal with crises, personal situations, whatever that arises, and I think that was the spot that I play in this movie, so I felt very comfortable doing that in the movie. It’s very different from the Spock that Zachary plays in the movie and very different from the Spock that I played in the series and films.” Leonard went into greater detail of this as he explains where he fits into the film compared to his younger counterpart, played by Zachary Quinto. “I think it’s pretty clear that Zachary’s performance and my performance bookend the character that was created in the original series and the original movies,” he believes, “What he’s doing in this movie successfully shows us that the origins of the Spock character, the struggles of the Spock character, to find his own personal, psychological design, the philosophy that he’s going to live by.” “And then, at the end of this movie, coming to the point when I think this is a seamless connection between what he’s doing and what I was doing with the original series,” Nimoy adds, “And in my case, I think I am much closer in this movie to my own personal life right now, so it’s not much of a stretch for me to be playing that aspect of the Spock character in this movie. I think that’s the best way to describe it.” Nimoy also told us what he felt was a particular subtle nuance that was captured from the TV series in the film. “The dialogue for Spock and McCoy in this movie is the most idiosyncratic, the closest, because those characters do speak idiosyncratically,” he notes, “There’s a certain kind of language that they use. There’s a certain kind of sentence structure that applies to those two characters more than the others I think. And therefore, I think you’d recognize them more in these performances, which I think are excellent. I think all the performances are excellent, but those characters are the most recognizable for that reason.” However, he said he had a particularly simple, but colorful reaction to a particular alteration in the film, involving close feelings between Spock and chief communications officer Nyota Uhura, played by Zoe Saldaña. “Travesty!” Leonard exclaims. One of the most incredible aspects of the original Star Trek series in hindsight was how unusually diverse the group of characters were for its time. We asked Leonard whether he realized any of the impact this would have on the show and its potential subsequent effect on American society and the world at large. “I did,” Nimoy says, “I felt very strongly that we were dealing with very important contemporary issues at the time. You kind of have to put yourself back in that period. The sixties were very turbulent. Racial issues, international concerns, all kinds, the feminist movement was beginning, a lot of very strong feelings about a lot of issues, on campuses and the streets and at all levels of society.” “And I felt that the writers were given an opportunity to deal with some of those issues in very interesting and profound ways that they were not getting opportunities to do in other television work,” he adds, “A writer could have a passion about a particular subject and come in and pitch a story based on that subject where, by setting it 300 years in the future, we were actually talking about our own selves and our own time and I felt very much at home doing that because I cared about these issues myself.” Nimoy adds that he tried to continue the series’s socially conscious spirit when he got to direct two of the Star Trek movies were made. “I tried very hard to bring those issues to bear when I was directing the films I did, I think,” he recalls, “I felt very good about Star Trek IV, for example, because I was reading a book called Biophilia, by a biologist who was writing about the loss of species on this planet and how many were being lost and the danger of losing species that hadn’t been identified.” “We didn’t even know what use they might have in the future and they’re already gone because we were not taking good care of the planet,” Leonard adds, “So I was able to deal with that issue in Star Trek IV with the whale story. Those were the high points for me, when we were able to deal with issues I cared about. I think we were very successful doing that.” Finally, we asked Leonard if he believes the world is ready for J.J. Abrams’s revival of Star Trek on the silver screen. “As far as the outlook of the film is concerned, I think it’s very timely,” he believes, “It’s a film about hope, about the future, of a group of people who come together to solve problems, and I happen to think it coincides wonderfully and excitedly with the current sense of the optimism and the hope that we need in this country as the result of a new administration, frankly. I don’t know what your political interests are, I don’t think it makes much difference, but the fact is that I think there’s a new energy and a new hope for a new kind of interplanetary thinking (laughing). No, I don’t mean that. I mean, international thinking, about how to communicate with each other and solve problems.” “This movie, for me, deals with the question of revenge and how empty, desolate, and destructive the cycle of revenge can be,” Nimoy continues, “And, hopefully, I think it’s something that will be applied in international relations in the near future. So I think it’s a very timely film in that sense. I think this film sets up that opportunity again to deal with issues like that again and the reintroduction of the cast gives a very new, fresh, and vital importance to all these issues.”