A teaser:
After he was killed off from the “Star Trek” movies, he began doing commercials, because, he said, “every day I realized I would not be a star.” He was 66, beefy, no longer matinee-idol handsome. As always, he worked cheap. In 1997, he took a modest salary (and stock options) to become a spokesman for a little-known online discount-travel company, Priceline. As the pompous Priceline pitchman, he became an Internet sensation among the hip-and-cynical blogger set, which thought he was hilarious in spoofing himself. He didn’t know who this William Shatner character was, but he played to it anyway, which helped lead him to a role in the mid-2000s on the television series “The Practice” and its spinoff, “Boston Legal,” that earned him two Emmys and a Golden Globe. He played the pompous, clueless, self-aggrandizing 70-something lawyer Denny Crane, suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s, which Crane calls “mad cow.” William Shatner the man was playing William Shatner the character playing the character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William Shatner. Shatner has said he once wore a William Shatner mask on Halloween — “Nobody knew who I was.”
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