He auditioned three times, took off his shirt for the producers and turned down a British accent before he was handed the role of a Greek god who demanded worship from the crew of the USS Enterprise.
Michael Forest, the actor who played Apollo on “Star Trek” and built a career of more than 200 credits across seven decades, died Oct. 14, 2026, in Sparks, Nev. He was 97.
His friend James A. Brown announced the death on Friday, Oct. 16, in a Facebook post that paired a photo of himself with the actor and a picture of the nameplate outside Forest’s room at MorningStar Senior Living in Sparks, where he had been living. The nameplate read “Jerry Charlebois” — the actor was born Gerald Michael Charlebois.
“It is with great sadness that I report that we have lost Michael Forest. I knew him as an actor and loved him as a friend. I’m sure others will share, but that’s all I’m capable of right now,” Brown wrote.
A cause of death has not been disclosed. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
A God Who Refused the British Accent
Forest appeared in exactly one episode of “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and it is the one fans remember. In “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” which aired in 1967, he played a towering being claiming to be Apollo, demanding worship from the crew of the USS Enterprise opposite William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
The part did not come easily. Forest auditioned three times before producers handed it to him, he told StarTrek.com in a 2012 interview, and they asked him to take off his shirt so they could check his build. They wanted a British accent for the god; Forest said that would not work for him and offered instead a mid-Atlantic theater speech. He read it that way, and the role was his.
He told StarTrek.com that the role had “really given [him his] 15 minutes of fame,” though he rated much of his other work alongside the episode or above it. Leslie Parrish, who played Lt. Carolyn Palamas opposite him in that episode, died at 90 in late 2025.
From Boxing Gloves to Roger Corman
Forest was born April 17, 1929, in Harvey, N.D., and moved with his family to Seattle as a young child. He considered boxing for a living, then changed course after watching a friend perform on stage. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and drama at San Jose State University and also studied at the University of Washington.
His stage career was extensive. He played Othello on three separate occasions and Petruchio in “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Old Globe in San Diego.
Forest moved to Los Angeles in 1955, and an acting class there introduced him to director Roger Corman. Corman cast him as the barbarian Zarko in “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent,” then in “Beast From Haunted Cave” in 1959 and “Ski Troop Attack” in 1960. He took the title role in the 1961 sword-and-sandal adventure “Atlas.”
Television kept him busy through the same years. He turned up on “Zorro,” “Have Gun – Will Travel,” “Maverick,” “Rawhide,” “Wagon Train” and “Gunsmoke,” and in three episodes of “Bonanza.” In 1964 he played a former boyfriend of Laura Petrie — Mary Tyler Moore’s character on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” — a man who had become a priest, and that same year he turned up on “The Twilight Zone” as a member of an alien biker gang in the episode “Black Leather Jackets.”
His film work included “100 Rifles,” with Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch and Jim Brown, and the role of Khalid bin Walid in “The Message.” Later came “King Kong Lives,” the 1993 thriller “Body of Evidence” with Madonna, and a pilot in the 2000 Tom Hanks film “Cast Away.” He also appeared on the soaps “As the World Turns,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless,” and on “Silk Stalkings.”
Hundreds of Dubbed Films in Rome
Forest lived in Rome between 1968 and 1978 and dubbed hundreds of films there, work that amounted to a second career. He was sometimes credited as Alfred Thor, and he became one of the busiest voices in English-language anime dubbing.
His anime roles included Alex Rosewater in “The Big O,” Kubota in “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex,” Inuyama in “Samurai Champloo,” Lurald in “Trigun,” Doctor Seijiro Inui in “Paprika” and Captain Paolo in the “Mobile Suit Gundam” movie trilogy. He voiced Dorai, Chun-Li’s father, in “Street Fighter II: V,” and worked on the “Dynasty Warriors” video game franchise, the Power Rangers franchise and the video game “World of Warcraft.” At 71, he played the villainous Prince Olympius in “Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue.”
He Played Apollo Opposite His Wife’s Athena
Forest returned to his famous role in 2013, nearly 46 years after the original, in “Pilgrim of Eternity,” an episode of the fan-made web series “Star Trek Continues.” His wife, actress and acting coach Diana Hale, played the goddess Athena. They married in 1970 and were together for 52 years, until her death in 2022.
Footage of his 1967 performance surfaced again in 2016’s “X-Men: Apocalypse.” In 2020 he was one of more than 40 “Star Trek” actors in Snoop Dogg’s sci-fi parody “Unbelievable!!!!!” He met fans at The Hollywood Show in Los Angeles in 2014 and 2017, and at the 17th annual “Star Trek” convention in Las Vegas in 2018.