Majel Barrett Biography

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Majel Barrett-Roddenberry (born Majel Lee Hudec on February 23, 1932 in Columbus, Ohio) is an American actress and widow of television director/producer/writer Gene Roddenberry. As a result of both her marriage to Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek's creator) and the fact that she has been in every Star Trek series, she is sometimes referred to as "the First Lady of Star Trek." She married Roddenberry on August 6, 1969 in Japan.

Before Star Trek

Barrett came to Hollywood in the 1950s. She worked at the Desilu Studios on several TV shows, including Bonanza, The Untouchables, The Lucy Show, and The Lieutenant. She received training in comedy from Lucille Ball. In 1960 she played Gwen Rutherford on Leave it to Beaver.

On Star Trek

Majel Barrett played several onscreen roles in the various incarnations of Star Trek, the popular science fiction television series:

• She first appeared in Star Trek's initial pilot episode "The Cage" as the USS Enterprise's unnamed First Officer, "Number One".
  

• (According to the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herbert Solow and Bob Justman, Barrett was cast as Number One because she was romantically involved with Roddenberry at the time. Solow and Justman claim the network was furious that Roddenberry would attempt to put an unknown actress in such a prominent role simply because she was his girlfriend, and allege that Roddenberry later claimed that the network told him to remove her because they did not want a woman to be in such a high position of authority.)
  

• Her role was changed to that of Nurse Christine Chapel when Star Trek became a regular series. In an early scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, viewers are informed that she has now become Doctor Chapel, a role which she continues in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  
• She provided numerous voices for Star Trek: The Animated Series.
  
• Years later, she was cast as the outrageously determined and iconoclastic Betazoid Ambassador Lwaxana Troi, who was a recurring character in Star Trek: The Next Generation and who also appeared in some episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  
• She also provided the regular voice of starship onboard computers for the original Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and the Star Trek movies. She reprised her role as a shipboard computer voice in the two episodes of the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise that involved earlier time periods.
  

As a result of her providing the computer voice in the Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", Barrett became the first and only actor to participate in all six Star Trek series as well as both the TOS and TNG film series.

After Star Trek

After Roddenberry's death, Barrett took material from his archives to bring two of his ideas into production. She was Executive Producer of Earth: Final Conflict, and later Andromeda.

Barrett also played the character Dr. Julianne Belman in Earth: Final Conflict. She made a guest appearance in a Babylon 5 episode "Point of No Return", as Lady Morella, the psychic widow of the Centauri emperor; her role foreshadowed major plot elements in the series. Parodying her voice work as the computer for the Star Trek series, Barrett performed as a guest voice on Family Guy as the voice of Stewie Griffin's ship.

External links

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