Michael Forest, Star Trek's Apollo, dies at 97
Michael Forest, the actor who played the Greek god Apollo in the original Star Trek, died on 14 October at age 97.
His death was announced on Facebook by his friend James A. Brown, according to Deadline. The post said he died on a Wednesday. He had been living in an assisted living facility in Sparks, Nevada.
Forest was born Gerald Michael Charlebois on 17 April 1929 in Harvey, North Dakota. He moved to Los Angeles in 1955. He trained in an acting class after the move. It was there that he met director Roger Corman.
That meeting shaped his first years on screen. He appeared in The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, released in 1958. He followed it with Beast From Haunted Cave in 1959. His early credits also included Ski Troop Attack in 1960 and Atlas in 1961.
Television brought the roles most viewers would remember. In 1964, he played a member of an alien biker gang in ‘Black Leather Jackets,’ an episode of The Twilight Zone, the anthology series that told a different story each week. Three years later came Star Trek. He played Apollo in ‘Who Mourns for Adonais?,’ the 1967 episode in which the starship crew meets a powerful being who claims to be the Greek god.
He also worked steadily in daytime drama. The continuing weekday serials, often called soaps, follow the same characters over years. Forest appeared in three of the best-known titles: As The World Turns, Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless.
His career stretched into later decades. In 2000, he played a pilot in Cast Away. In 2013, he returned as Apollo for Star Trek Continues, a fan-made web series, meaning episodes made by enthusiasts and released online outside the studio system. The gap between the two Apollo performances was 46 years.
What makes this stand out is the span. From Corman features in the 1950s to a fan production in the 2010s, his screen work crossed six decades.
His wife, actress Diana Hale, died in 2022. Forest was 97 at the time of his death.
