George Takei Net Worth

George Takei's Quotes

• [on William Shatner]: He's just a wonderful actor who created a singular character. No one could have done Kirk the way Bill did. His energy and his determination, that's Bill. And that's also Captain Kirk.
• (2005) The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.
• [during a 2006 interview with Scott Simon on National Public Radio] I went to school in a black tar-paper barrack [as a child in internment camps] and began the day seeing the barbed-wire fence, and thank god those barbed-wire fences are now long gone for Japanese Americans. But I still see an invisible, legalistic barbed-wire that keeps me, my partner of 19 years, Brad Altman, and another group of Americans separated from a normal life. That's what I've been advocating on the Human Rights Campaign Equality Tour--I call it the "Equality Trek".
• [on the Occupy Wall Street movement] The struggle is not only social, economic and political - it is *structural*. No matter what side you are on, it is worth listening to what they have to say.
• John D.F. Black who wrote Star Trek: The Naked Time (1966) came to me and said he was thinking of having Sulu use a Samurai sword. I told him, "It certainly is ethnically appropriate because I am of Japanese ancestry but what about a rapier? I was born in this country and when I was a kid I didn't play Samurai. I played Robin Hood." He asked me if I know how to fence to which I replied, "Of course." That night I grabbed the phonebook and was furiously trying to find fencing schools so I could learn at least the basics.

Interesting Facts about George Takei

1. During World War II, Takei lived with his family in several government internment camps for people of Japanese ancestry. President Franklin Roosevelt signed the applicable Executive Order No. 9066, on February 19th 1942. In December 1944, President Roosevelt suspended Executive Order 9066. Incarcerees were released, often to resettlement facilities and temporary housing, and the camps were shut down by 1946. Ironically, George shares a birthday with Adolf Hitler; he was born on Hitler's 48th birthday so he was still alive.
2. Attended and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles. His major was Theater Arts and his minor was Latin American Studies. His father said that both of those areas of study meant that he would be supporting George for the rest of his life.
3. In 1996, he became the first original Star Trek (1966) series actor to go to a South American convention, in São Paulo, Brazil.
4. When he met with Gene Roddenberry about a role on Star Trek (1966), Roddenberry called him Takei (pronouncing it "Ta-KAI"), which translates from the Japanese as "expensive" or "tall" (his name is actually pronounced "Ta-KAY", which rhymes with "okay"). This is how Roddenberry remembered his name.
5. Has initially declined to appear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), but William Shatner personally called him and persuaded him to star in the film.
6. Among his first acting jobs was as a voice artist. Although he was only a teenager, he dubbed English dialog for adult characters in Japanese films being released in the United States.
7. Has initially objected to the scene in Op zoek naar Spock (1984) where the tall Starfleet guard calls him "tiny". When the scene was screened for audiences, the audiences cheered Sulu (Takei) when he defeated the tall guard, and Takei later apologized to writer Harve Bennett for it.
8. Has stated that his favourite Star Trek (1966) episode is Star Trek: The Naked Time (1966).
9. Is a favorite of the Howard Stern audience.
10. His family was incarcerated at an internment camp in Arkansas when he was 4 to 8 years old. He learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance while surrounded by guard towers and barbed-wire fences.
11. Along with Robert Duncan McNeill and Robert Picardo, he is one of only three "Star Trek" regulars to wear all three uniform colours. He wore a blue (medical/science) uniform in the second Star Trek (1966) pilot, Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966), the gold (command) uniform in every subsequent episode of the series in which he appeared and the red (security) uniform in Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror (1967).
12. Has appeared in episodes of three different series with Walter Koenig: Star Trek (1966), Diagnosis Murder (1993) and Futurama (1999).
13. Has appeared in episodes of three different series with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols: Star Trek (1966), Star Trek (1973) and Futurama (1999).
14. Has appeared in episodes of three different series with Grace Lee Whitney: Star Trek (1966), Star Trek: Voyager (1995) and Diagnosis Murder (1993).
15. Has been a jogger for many years, and runs marathons. In the Los Angeles Marathon, his best time, as of 1989, was 3 hours and 40 minutes.
16. Reprised his role as Hikaru Sulu for the 2006 Internet-only series Star Trek: New Voyages (2004), after the suggestion of co-star Walter Koenig.
17. For the television special "The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next" (1988), George Takei explains how he once rode a Los Angeles plane with Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) star Patrick Stewart. They talked immediately after recognizing one another, but there were complications during final approach, unknown to either actor until landing. He joked to the pilots that the helmsman of the original Enterprise and captain of the Enterprise-D could have offered assistance.
18. An asteroid between Mars and Jupiter (discovered on April 13, 1994) has been renamed 7307 Takei in his honor.
19. His character Kaito Nakamura's last name is his mother's maiden name.
20. His father was an Anglophile, and named him George Takei after King George VI of the United Kingdom, whose coronation took place on May 12, 1937.