Typecasting (acting) - With Character Actors - Star Trek

An example is the cast of the original Star Trek:

lost control of their destinies the minute they stepped on the bridge of the make-believe Enterprise in 1966.

and

For most of the actors in the original "Star Trek" series, Starfleet has never been far off the professional horizons.

“	Doohan regrets that Star Trek will not be renewed for next year, but he considers the exposure the show has given invaluable.	”
—United Press International, 1969

During Star Trek's original run from 1966 to 1969, William Shatner was the highest paid cast member at $5,000 per episode ($36,000 today), with Leonard Nimoy and the other actors paid much less. The press predicted that Nimoy would be a star after the show ended, however, and James Doohan expected that appearing on an NBC series would help his post-Star Trek career. The show so typecast the actors, however—as early as March 1970, Nichelle Nichols complained of Star Trek having "defined so narrowly as an actress"—that only Shatner and Nimoy continued working steadily during the 1970s, and even their work received little attention unless it was Star Trek-related. The others' income came mostly from personal appearances at Star Trek conventions attended by Trekkies; by 1978 DeForest Kelley, for example, earned up to $50,000 ($178,000 today) annually. In 1979 the first of six films starring the cast appeared; Kelley earned $1 million for the final film, Star Trek VI (1991). Being identified so closely with one role left the show's cast with mixed emotions; Shatner called it "awesome and irksome", and Walter Koenig called it "bittersweet" but admitted that there was "a certain immortality in being associated with Star Trek".

“	If what happened to the first cast is called being typecast, then I want to be typecast. Of course, they didn't get the jobs after 'Trek.' But they are making their sixth movie. Name me someone else in television who has made six movies!	”
—Michael Dorn, 1991

The Next Generation actors also become typecast. Patrick Stewart's most prominent non-Star Trek film or television role, for example, is Professor X—like Jean-Luc Picard, a science fiction "grand, deep-voiced, bald English guy"—and he has stated "I don't have a film career. I have a franchise career." Jonathan Frakes has stated that "it’s better to be type-cast than not to be cast at all." The Next Generation had one of the largest budgets of its time, however, and its cast became very wealthy during its filming.