GEORGE TAKEI Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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GEORGE TAKEI

Name: George Hosato Takei                                                           
Born: 20 April 1937 Los Angeles, California, U.S.                                   
                                                                                     
George Hosato Takei (born April 20, 1937) is a Japanese American actor best         
known for his role in the TV series Star Trek, in which he played the helmsman       
Hikaru Sulu on the USS Enterprise. Most recently, he played Hiro Nakamura's         
father Kaito Nakamura on the NBC television show Heroes.                             
                                                                                     
Takei is also known for his baritone voice and deep-throated catch phrase, "Oh       
my!" Consequently, Takei began recurring appearances as the announcer for The       
Howard Stern Show on January 9, 2006, after that show's move to satellite radio.     
                                                                                     
Takei was born in Los Angeles, California, to Fumiko Emily Nakamura and Takekuma     
Norman Takei, who worked in real estate. His father was an Anglophile, and           
named him George after King George VI of the United Kingdom, whose coronation       
took place in 1937.                                                                 
                                                                                     
In 1942, the Takei family was sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center for           
internment in Arkansas. The family was later transferred to the Tule Lake War       
Relocation Center in California. Despite this experience, the family developed a     
renewed dedication and remained involved in the American democratic process. He     
and his family returned to Los Angeles at the end of World War II. He attended       
Mount Vernon Junior High School - he served as student body president - and Los     
Angeles High School. He enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley         
where he studied architecture. Later he attended the University of California at     
Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor of arts in theater in 1960 and a           
master of arts in theater in 1964. He attended the Shakespeare Institute at         
Stratford-Upon-Avon in England, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. In           
Hollywood, he studied acting at the Desilu Workshop. Takei is fluent in             
English, Japanese, and Spanish.                                                     
                                                                                     
In Hollywood during the 1960s, he pursued his ambition to be an actor at a time     
when Asian faces were rarely seen on television and movie screens; Takei             
appeared alongside such actors as Richard Burton in Ice Palace in 1960, Alec         
Guinness in A Majority of One in 1962, Cary Grant in Walk Don't Run in 1966. He     
played Captain Nim, an ARVN LLDB (Luc Lang Dac Biet- Special Forces) officer         
alongside John Wayne's character in the 1968 Vietnam War era film, The Green         
Berets. He also had an uncredited role in the 1963 film PT-109 as the helmsman       
who steers the Japanese destroyer over John F. Kennedy's PT-109, and also           
starred in an episode of Mission: Impossible during that show's first season in     
1966.