Many award-winning actors have been drawn to the Star Trek franchise, while other stars have used their roles as a stepping stone to Oscar gold. While only a handful of Oscar-winning actors have appeared in Star Trek movies and shows before and after their win, many more have been nominated. For example, Star Trek: First Contact‘s James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard had both previously been nominated for an Academy Award, for their roles in Babe and Cross Creek, respectively.
Sadly, none of the Star Trek movies have ever seen their lead actors nominated for an Oscar, perhaps due to the Academy’s snobbery toward franchise films. While the Academy may look down on the Star Trek franchise, the same can’t be said for those actors who have won an award. Many Oscar-winning actors have been drawn to Star Trek over the years, usually enticed by the nuanced scripts and rich characters that they’re being asked to play. While Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s cast featured an Oscar-winning actress in a regular role, Star Trek: Voyager managed to secure the services of two Oscar winners in guest roles.
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7 Joel Grey – Caylem in Star Trek: Voyager
Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Cabaret, 1973
Star Trek: Voyager guest actor Joel Grey had won an Oscar for his role as the Master of Ceremonies in 1972’s Cabaret. The Master of Ceremonies was Joel Grey’s breakthrough role, leading to an illustrious career on stage and screen. The Voyager production team was keen to reunite Joel Grey and Kate Mulgrew after they’d starred together in the movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. After repeated attempts to cast the Cabaret star, it was the script for the heartbreaking episode “Resistance” that finally convinced Grey to accept a guest role.
6 Louise Fletcher – Kai Winn in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Best Actress – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1976
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s Louise Fletcher won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Nurse Ratched in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Fletcher was one of six Star Trek actors in the Oscar winning movie, which also starred Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito. Louise Fletcher also won a Golden Globe in the US, and a BAFTA in the UK for her performance as the chilling psychiatric nurse. Over a decade later, Louise Fletcher brought some of Ratched’s chilly inscrutability to the role of religious fundamentalist villain Kai Winn in DS9.
5 Paul Williams – Koru in Star Trek: Voyager
Best Music, Original Song – A Star is Born, 1977
Paul Williams is best known as an Oscar winning composer and songwriter, whose original song “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)” won an Oscar in 1977. However, Paul Williams also has a long list of acting credits to his name, including a role as Koru in the appropriately musical Star Trek: Voyager episode, “Virtuoso”. As an Oscar winning musician, Paul Williams was perfectly cast as the alien who took an interest in the musical talents of Voyager‘s Doctor (Robert Picardo).
4 F. Murray Abraham – Ru’afo in Star Trek: Insurrection
Best Actor in a Leading Role – Amadeus, 1985
Decades before playing the villainous Ru’afo in Star Trek: Insurrection, F. Murray Abraham won an Oscar for his role as frustrated composer Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. Abraham was unforgettable as the unreliable narrator of the story of Salieri’s rivalry with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce). The later scenes in which F. Murray Abraham wears a latex mask to play the older Salieri was a neat bit of foreshadowing for the heavily made-up ageing Star Trek villain Ru’afo from Insurrection.
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3 Whoopi Goldberg – Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Ghost, 1991
Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Color Purple in 1986, the year before Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. Because of her Oscar nomination, TNG‘s producers thought Goldberg was joking when she lobbied for a role in the Star Trek show. Five years later, Whoopi Goldberg had taken time out from playing Guinan in TNG to play the similarly clairvoyant Oda Mae Brown in Ghost. It was her role in Ghost that would win Whoopi Goldberg a Best Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar in 1991.
2 Christopher Plummer – General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Beginners, 2012
Christopher Plummer made a huge impression as the Shakespeare-loving Klingon, General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Despite a career littered with great performances, Christopher Plummer wasn’t nominated for an Oscar until 2010. Two years later, Plummer won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the Ewan McGregor movie Beginners in which he played a terminally ill museum director who only came out to his son toward the end of his life. Plummer was again nominated for an Oscar for his performance as J. Paul Getty, which was slotted into Ridley Scott’s already-completed All the Money in the World after the disgraced actor Kevin Spacey was removed.
1 Michelle Yeoh – Emperor Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek: Discovery
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2023
Star Trek‘s Michelle Yeoh won an Oscar in 2023 for her role as Evelyn Wang in the mind-bending sci-fi action epic Everything Everywhere All at Once. Incredibly, in the Oscar’s 94-year history up to that point, Michelle Yeoh was the first Asian woman to win an Oscar for lead actress. Yeoh has been able to use her Oscar win and her increased profile to drive the Philippa Georgiou spinoff movie Star Trek: Section 31 into production. While Section 31 won’t be eligible for the Academy Awards, it proves that the Star Trek franchise continues to attract Oscar-winning talent.
