Star Trek legend William Shatner has said he doesn’t “have long to live”.
The 91-year-old recently finished his new documentary ‘You Can Call Me Bill’, which is described as ”an intimate portrait of William Shatner’s personal journey over nine decades on this Earth”.
While wider release plans have yet to be finalised, the film will air at this year’s SXSW festival.
Speaking about his decision to make the doc, Shatner said: “I’ve turned down a lot of offers to do documentaries before. But I don’t have long to live.“
He went on to tell Variety that “whether I keel over as I’m speaking to you or 10 years from now, my time is limited, so that’s very much a factor. I’ve got grandchildren. This documentary is a way of reaching out after I die.
“The sad thing is that the older a person gets the wiser they become and then they die with all that knowledge.”
Speaking about his decision to attend a fundraiser in 2015 instead of going to Leonard Nimoy’s funeral, Shatner reiterated what he said at the time: “People ask about a legacy. There’s no legacy. Statues are torn down. Graveyards are ransacked. Headstones are knocked over,” before adding “but what does live on are good deeds.”
“If you do a good deed, it reverberates to the end of time. It’s the butterfly effect thing. That’s why I have done this film,” he continued.
In 2021, Shatner became the oldest person ever to go into space.
Shatner flew on a Blue Origin rocket, which was developed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who was also on the flight. The trip lasted about 10 minutes.
“You look down, there’s the blue down there and the black up there – and it’s just, there is Mother Earth. This is life and that’s death, and in an instant, you know that’s death,” Shatner said after he landed.
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