The actor who played a god on the original “Star Trek” and then built a second career as one of anime’s busiest voices has died.
Michael Forest, who played the Greek god Apollo on “Star Trek,” died at 97 on Oct. 14, 2026, in Sparks, Nev.
His friend James A. Brown announced the death Friday, Oct. 16, in a Facebook post. Brown shared 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 recently been living. The nameplate read “Jerry Charlebois.” Forest 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.
Forest piled up more than 200 credits across seven decades. He appeared in exactly one episode of “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and that is the one fans remember. In “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” which aired in 1967, he played a towering being who claimed to be Apollo and demanded that the crew of the USS Enterprise worship him. The episode also starred William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
The Shirtless Audition That Made Him a God
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 to check whether he had the build they wanted. They also wanted the god delivered in a British accent. Forest said that would not work for him and offered mid-Atlantic theater speech instead. He read it that way, and the role was his.
From Drive-In Monsters to a Tom Hanks Blockbuster
He was born April 17, 1929, in Harvey, N.D., and moved with his family to Seattle as a young child. He thought about boxing for a living, then watched a friend perform on stage and changed course. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and drama from San Jose State University and moved to Los Angeles in 1955, where an acting class introduced him to director Roger Corman. Corman cast him in “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent,” then “Beast From Haunted Cave” in 1959 and “Ski Troop Attack” in 1960. In 1961 he took the title role in the sword-and-sandal adventure “Atlas.”
Television kept him busy for years. He rode through “Zorro,” “Have Gun – Will Travel,” “Maverick,” “Rawhide,” “Wagon Train,” “Gunsmoke” and three episodes of “Bonanza.” In 1964 he played a former boyfriend of Laura Petrie, played by Mary Tyler Moore, on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” — a man who had become a priest. That same year he turned up as a member of an alien biker gang in “The Twilight Zone” episode “Black Leather Jackets.”
On film he appeared in “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,” and turned up on “Silk Stalkings.”
The Rome Years That Launched a Voice Career
Forest lived in Rome between 1968 and 1978 and dubbed hundreds of films there. That work became a second career. Sometimes credited as Alfred Thor, he became one of the busiest voices in English-language anime dubbing: 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 also lent his voice to the “Dynasty Warriors” video game franchise. At 71, he played the villainous Prince Olympius in “Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue.”
A God Returns, Nearly 46 Years Later
In 2013 he put the role back on. Forest returned as Apollo in the fan-made web series “Star Trek Continues,” in the episode “Pilgrim of Eternity,” nearly 46 years after the original. His wife, actress and acting coach Diana Hale, played the goddess Athena. They married in 1970 and were together 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 40 “Star Trek” actors in Snoop Dogg’s sci-fi parody “Unbelievable!!!!!” He kept meeting fans in person, too, appearing at The Hollywood Show in Los Angeles in 2014 and 2017 and at the 17th annual “Star Trek” convention in Las Vegas in 2018.
Leslie Parrish, who played Lt. Carolyn Palamas opposite him in “Who Mourns for Adonais?,” died at 90 in late 2025. A cause of death has not been disclosed for Forest, and complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
Forest told StarTrek.com in 2012 that he rated much of his other work alongside the episode, or above it. The role, he said, had “really given [him his] 15 minutes of fame.”
