Michael Forest

Michael Forest was born Gerald Michael Charlebois on 17 April 1929 in Harvey, North Dakota. When he was very young his family moved to Seattle, Washington. He later said he chose acting over boxing after watching a friend perform at the Seattle Rep Playhouse. He attended the University of Washington and San Jose State, graduating from San Jose State with a BA in English and drama, and moved to Los Angeles in 1955.

In Los Angeles Forest appeared on an episode of Highway Patrol and acted with the Players Ring theatre company in West Hollywood. He met Roger Corman in an acting class taught by Jeff Corey, and Corman hired him to play the whip-cracking barbarian Zarko in The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957). He then played the local guide Gil Jackson in the horror heist film Beast from Haunted Cave (1959), shot in snowy Deadwood, South Dakota, starred as an American soldier in Ski Troop Attack (1960) and travelled to Greece to play the title role in Atlas (1961).

In 1960 he had a recurring role as the French Canadian rogue Pierre Duran opposite Roger Moore in The Alaskans. Under contract first to Warner Bros. and later to Universal, he worked on series including Zorro, Maverick, Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, Wagon Train, Dr. Kildare, The Outer Limits, Perry Mason, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Gunsmoke, Combat!, Gilligan's Island and Get Smart. In January 1964 he played one of three motorcycle-riding brothers from another planet in The Twilight Zone episode "Black Leather Jackets", and days later appeared on The Dick Van Dyke Show as a former love interest of Laura Petrie who had become a priest. Alongside screen work he performed Shakespeare on stage, playing Othello three times and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at the Old Globe in San Diego. A recommendation from that theatre led to his casting as Apollo, the god who demands the worship of the Enterprise crew, in the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?", first broadcast in September 1967.

From 1968 to 1978 Forest lived in Rome. Fluent in Italian, he dubbed more than 500 films, and he made more than 20 films in Spain, France and England, including 100 Rifles (1969) with Jim Brown and Raquel Welch, and played Khalid ibn al-Walid in The Message (1976). Returning to the United States, he lived in New York while playing Nick Andropoulos, owner of the Greek restaurant The Plakka, on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns from 1980 to 1982. Later film roles included a wealthy older man in Body of Evidence (1993) and a pilot in Cast Away (2000).

Forest became one of the busiest voices in English dubs of Japanese animation, with roles in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Last Exile, Samurai Champloo, Planetes, Trigun, The Big O, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Paprika, among many others, as well as video games such as Dynasty Warriors 4. At the age of 71 he voiced Prince Olympius in Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. In 2013, almost 46 years after his original appearance, he played Apollo again in "Pilgrim of Eternity", an episode of the fan production Star Trek Continues.

Forest was married to the actress, acting coach and theatre teacher Diana Hale for 52 years, until her death in 2022. The couple appeared together in Star Trek Continues in 2013, with Hale playing Athena opposite his Apollo. Reflecting on his career, he once said it had not been what might be called distinguished, but it had not been bad either, and that he took a great deal of pride in some of his work.

Michael Forest died on Wednesday 14 October 2026, aged 97. He had been living in a facility for seniors in Sparks, Nevada. His death was announced by his friend James A. Brown and reported by The Hollywood Reporter on 16 October 2026. The cause of death was not made public.

Forest's portrayal of Apollo, a towering figure demanding worship from the Enterprise crew, became one of the best remembered guest performances of the original Star Trek, and footage of it later appeared in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). His early leading roles for Roger Corman are part of the history of American independent genre film, and his decades of voice work, from Italian dubbing in Rome to English dubs of Japanese animation, made his voice familiar to audiences who never saw his face.