Actor / Director Profile

Widely known and admired as Romulan Subcommander Tal in the original "Star Trek" (1966), Jack Donner has worked steadily in TV, film and theater since the 1950s. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he did his first professional theater and TV work there before heading for New York during the glory days of TV, appearing in many prestigious early shows like "Studio One in Hollywood" (1948), and soap operas such as "As the World Turns" (1956) and "Guiding Light" (1952). He also did seven seasons of New York regional and stock theater. Returning to L.A., he worked his way up to guest star and co-star status in shows like "The Streets of San Francisco" (1972), "Mannix" (1967), "Kojak" (1973), "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (1964), the aforementioned "Star Trek" (1966) episode "The Enterprise Incident", and eleven episodes (the most by any guest star in any series) of "Mission: Impossible" (1966). He also founded, with fellow actor Lee Delano, his own theater and drama school. His students included Barry Levinson, Craig T. Nelson, Barbara Parkins, and Don Johnson. Recent TV credits include "Baywatch" (1989), "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997), "Frasier" (1993), "Charmed" (1998), "General Hospital" (1963), "Chicken Soup for the Soul" (1999), "Good vs Evil" (1999), "Malcolm in the Middle" (2000) and "Roswell" (1999), and as a regular in The Privateers (2000) (TV). Donner has assayed a wide variety of roles in recent feature films such as Gideon (1999) (with Christopher Lambert and Charlton Heston), and Family Tree (1999) (with Robert Forster). With his deep, resonant voice, silver-white hair and patrician profile, he has recently been compared with Vincent Price for his roles in a run of classy horror flicks, as Afzel the sorcerer in Retro Puppet Master (1999) (V), the mysterious Father Almeida in Stigmata (1999), the manipulative Dr. Bassett in Demon Under Glass (2002) (V), and the obsessed Father Lansing in Exorcism (2003).