Walter Koenig

Veteran American actor Walter Koenig celebrates 60 years in television in 2023. He first found fame playing Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek series of the late 1960s. He would go on to appear in the first seven Star Trek movies between 1979 and 1994 and also appeared in the 2016 fan film, Star Trek: Renegades. But Koenig has also done far more than Star Trek. His other credits include playing Alfred Bester in Babylon 5 and films such as Diminuendo and Unbelievable!!! He also voiced Mr Savic in the animated series, Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters.

Koenig was born in Chicago in September 1936 to Russian parents who had emigrated from Lithuania. He was studying psychology at UCLA when one of the professors advised him to try his hand at acting. He did, and subsequently trained in the craft at the Neighborhood Playhouse School in New York alongside classmates James Caan and Christopher Lloyd. His TV debut came in the pilot episode of General Hospital in April 1963, a show that is still going today as the longest-running soap opera in American history. However, it wasn’t until 1967 and his casting as Chekov in Star Trek, that he got his breakthrough.

Koenig’s other TV credits throughout the years have included the classic likes of Columbo, Ironside, and Futurama, but it’s Star Trek that he has always remained closely associated with, reprising his role ti for TV, movies, and video games for nearly 50 years.