William Shatner: ‘You’re lucky if you get just one friend in a lifetime’

He’s like a professor, the revered and feared kind, the scholarly voice-of-God type. He speaks with a purpose but sprinkles in humour and questions. The man who played Captain James T. Kirk is also the author of several books, including the recent Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man, a biography of his late friend and Star Trek castmate Leonard Nimoy. This autumn will bring Shatner’s novel Zero G, a story about the FBI in space a half-century from now. He’s developed comic books, games and documentaries, including one based on his Chicago-to-Los Angeles ride on a motorcycle he helped design. Currently the Canadian-born actor is involved with “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage”, a symphony concert that blends live music with video from the movies and television show, and is touring with his one-man show, “Shatner’s World”.

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While writing your book about Leonard Nimoy, what did you learn about your friend?

How enormously creative he was. He was doing things I didn’t know about, and the things he was doing, he had so much to do with that I didn’t know about. Doing my due diligence into his life, it was incredible, and I wish I would have known that. But the book is about friendship. It’s about why men have more difficulty making friends than women – at least that’s my opinion. And how important a deep friendship is and how few and far they are between. You’re lucky if you get just one friend in a lifetime. Many people don’t have it ever, and I had it for a brief while.

Is your creativity a point of pride?

I don’t consciously say, “Aren’t I wonderful?” and “I’m creative,” but things occur to me that don’t occur to anybody else around me. Then I have the ability, because of this so-called celebrity, to sometimes do something about it. I just recently was asked to make a Christmas album, for example. Suddenly, the concept was in front of me. Of course, I’m not going to tell you the concept. It’s simple enough, but nobody’s done it yet, to my knowledge. I spoke the concept to the guy who was going to put money into it and he said, “I love it. Let’s do it.” So I will do a Christmas album for next Christmas based on this concept.

So what is the nature of that creativity? How does it work? Where does it lie in your brain?