Please Rewind Talent Wall

Brent Spiner

Brent Spiner has built a career around precision, comic timing and a willingness to play wonderfully unusual characters. Born in Houston on February 2, 1949, he developed his performance skills on Bellaire High School’s speech team, winning a national championship in dramatic interpretation. He later attended the University of Houston and worked in local theater before leaving without a degree. After moving to New York City in the early 1970s, Spiner appeared in Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including The Three Musketeers and Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. That stage background makes sense when watching his screen work: even at his most restrained, there is often a strong sense of rhythm and control underneath the performance. His defining role arrived in 1987, when he was cast as Lieutenant Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Spiner appeared as the android officer in all but one of the show’s 178 episodes and continued the role across four feature films: Star Trek Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis. Data’s ongoing attempt to understand human behavior gave Spiner room to work with deadpan comedy, curiosity and emotion without losing the character’s carefully constructed physicality. He also played Data’s brother Lore, B-4 and several members of the Soong family across Star Trek series, later returning in Star Trek: Picard. Spiner’s career extends well beyond the Enterprise. He played the perpetually troubled Bob Wheeler on Night Court, appeared in Friends, Cheers and The Big Bang Theory, and took roles in films including Independence Day, The Aviator, I Am Sam and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. His voice work has included Gargoyles and Young Justice, in which he voiced the Joker. Music and theater have remained part of the picture too. Spiner recorded the 1991 album Ol’ Yellow Eyes Is Back, a collection of 1940s pop standards, and returned to Broadway in 1997 as John Adams in a revival of 1776. It is a varied body of work, but the connecting thread is clear: Spiner knows how to find character through voice, posture and timing, whether playing an android, a comic eccentric or a historical figure.