Nimoy And Those Pointed Ears
1 min readLeonard Nimoy has been gone for three years, but an old interview from 1976 has resurfaced revealing that the actor hated the Vulcan pointed ears at first.
“In the early stages of developing the makeup, before we shot the first pilot, we were with the wrong makeup people,” said Nimoy said in the old audio interview. “And they were making the ears for me, experimentally at first, and they really looked grotesque. And we went through three or four of those sessions. As time got closer to the first day of shooting … I became more and more concerned about the look.”
The actor complained to Gene Roddenberry, who promised an “operation” if the ears continued to be a problem for him.
“And finally, it was Fred Phillips, who was in charge of the makeup on the series, who knew what was wrong,” said Nimoy “The problem was the studio had already made a commitment to these other people to make the ears and didn’t want him to go elsewhere because it would cost more money. [Phillips] said we must and forced the issue, and got me a good pair of ears to solve the problem.”
The actor wore one-hundred-and-fifty pairs of ears during the run of the original series.