The man who played a god demanding worship from the crew of the USS Enterprise had to audition three times, and take off his shirt, before the producers let him have the part.
Michael Forest, the actor who played the Greek god Apollo on “Star Trek,” died Oct. 14, 2026, in Sparks, Nev. He was 97.
His friend James A. Brown announced the death Friday, Oct. 16, in a Facebook post that paired a photo of the two men with a picture of the nameplate outside Forest’s room. Forest had recently been living at MorningStar Senior Living in Sparks, and the nameplate read “Jerry Charlebois.” He 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 for Forest, and complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
Why Apollo Lost the British Accent
Forest piled up more than 200 credits across seven decades, yet a single hour of television stayed with fans longer than anything else he did. He appeared in exactly one episode of “Star Trek: The Original Series,” “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” which aired in 1967, playing a towering being who claimed to be Apollo and demanded worship from the crew of the USS Enterprise. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy also starred in the episode.
Producers made him audition three times before handing him the part, Forest told StarTrek.com in a 2012 interview. They asked him to take off his shirt so they could check his build. They also wanted a British accent for the god, and Forest said that would not work for him, offering instead the mid-Atlantic speech of the theater. He read it that way, and the role was his.
Forest said the part had “really given [him his] 15 minutes of fame.” He rated much of his other work alongside the episode, or above it, in that same interview. Leslie Parrish, who played Lt. Carolyn Palamas opposite him in “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” died at 90 in late 2025.
From the Boxing Ring to 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 watched a friend perform on stage and changed course. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and drama at San Jose State University and also studied at the University of Washington.
He 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. Forest took the title role in the 1961 sword-and-sandal adventure “Atlas.”
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.
Television kept him working through the westerns of the era: “Zorro,” “Have Gun – Will Travel,” “Maverick,” “Rawhide,” “Wagon Train” and “Gunsmoke,” plus three episodes of “Bonanza.” He turned up on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” in 1964 as a former boyfriend of Laura Petrie, played by Mary Tyler Moore — a man who had become a priest. That same year he joined an alien biker gang in “The Twilight Zone” episode “Black Leather Jackets.”
He appeared in the film “100 Rifles” with Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch and Jim Brown, and played 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 worked on the soaps “As the World Turns,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless,” as well as “Silk Stalkings.”
A Second Career Made 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.
He became one of the busiest voices in English-language anime dubbing. His 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.”
His voice work also reached video games, including “World of Warcraft” and the Power Rangers and Dynasty Warriors franchises. At 71, he played the villainous Prince Olympius in “Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue.”
Apollo Again, With Athena Beside Him
Forest returned to Apollo in 2013, nearly 46 years after the original, in the fan-made web series “Star Trek Continues” and its episode “Pilgrim of Eternity.” His wife, actress and acting coach Diana Hale, played the goddess Athena in it. They married in 1970 and were together for 52 years, until her death in 2022.
Footage of his 1967 performance surfaced 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.
