Star Trek legend William Shatner has revealed he doesn’t have long to live, calling his time left ‘limited.’
The 91 year-old has recently finished making his documentary You Can Call Me Bill, that candidly reflects on his life and longly successful acting career.
The film will air at this year’s SXSW festival, and has been described as ”an intimate portrait of William Shatner’s personal journey over nine decades on this Earth.”
And if anyone’s had a career worth documenting, Shatner is certainly the right man – having most famously played James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, a role he first took on back in 1966 when he was 35 years-old.
If that wasn’t impressive enough, he also has some pretty notable personal highlights too, and in 2021, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go into space.
Developed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Shatner flew on a Blue Origin rocket. The trip lasted about 10 minutes.
“You look down, there’s the blue down there and the black up there – and it’s just, there is Mother Earth. This is life and that’s death, and in an instant, you know that’s death,” Shatner said after he landed.
When speaking on his decision to make the documentary, and more specifically answer the question of why now, Shatner put it bluntly – ”I don’t have long to live,” he said.”I’ve turned down a lot of offers to do documentaries before.”
He went on to tell Variety that ”whether I keel over as I’m speaking to you or 10 years from now, my time is limited, so that’s very much a factor. I’ve got grandchildren. This documentary is a way of reaching out after I die.”
”The sad thing is that the older a person gets the wiser they become and then they die with all that knowledge”
”There was a time when actors, and I include myself in this, would portray death by falling to the ground and your eyes would flicker and you’d slump around and then you’re dead. That’s not how you die.”
”This is how you die [Shatner’s eyes go wide abruptly and his breath stops]. See? I’m dead. Ever put a dog down? When I have to put a dog down and I’m at the vet, I cup my dog’s head and I say, ‘I’m with you baby, I’m with you.’ And the injection goes in and the dog looks at me with love, and that’s it. You don’t know they’re dead.”
”That’s how you die. It’s abrupt. My wife’s brother walked out of the living room and into the bedroom. There was a thud. His wife walked in, and he was dead. Death comes anew to all of us.”
Want to watch his new documentary? SXSW 2023 runs from Friday 10 March to Sunday 19 March.
