Robert Beltran

Robert Beltran is an actor best known for playing Commander Chakotay in all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The role won him a Nosotros Golden Eagle Award for Outstanding Male Actor, but it’s just one of the many roles he has played in a career that has now thrived for more than 40 years. He has also played many major Shakespearean parts in the theatre, including Hamlet, and has many films to his credit too, including cult classics such as Eating Raoul and Zoot Suit. His more recent roles have included reviving the voice of Commander Chakotay for the 2022 animated Star Trek: Prodigy series.

Beltran was born in California to Mexican parents. He studied acting in Fresno and then went to Los Angeles to make it as a pro actor. With the California theatre scene already on his resume, he got his first screen role in the 1981 musical Zoot Suit, which was nominated for a Golden Globe and is now rightly regarded as a seminal picture. He focused largely on movies for the next 14 years, and apart from a recurring role in Murder, She Wrote, it wasn’t until 1995 that he accepted his first starring TV role — as Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager.

Star Trek is a series notorious for its devoted fanbase, and so with Beltran’s run in the show being a long and successful one, he earned his place in Trekkie lore. The show concluded in 2001 but Beltran has returned to the role since among many other parts.