Star Trek actor Andrew Prine dies aged 86

Andrew Prine, famed for his roles in Westerns as well as in Star Trek, Weird Science and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, has passed away. He was 86.

Prine was born in Jennings, Florida and after high school, he moved to New York City to become an actor. In 1957, he scored his a credited role on the TV show The United States Steel Hour and then filled in for Anthony Perkins when he left the play Look Homeward, Angel in 1959. Prine said that the smash-hit play taught him how to act over the two years that he was attached to the production.

One year later, he appeared in the Academy Award-nominated The Miracle Worker as Helen Keller's brother James, and soon snagged the lead role beside Earl Holliman in the Western TV show Wide Country.

“So I said I’m just going to go out [to California] and do [that] and I’m coming right back to Broadway,” explained Prine in an episode of A Word on Westerns from 2013. “Then I found out how much money they would give me just to sit on a horse, and I said, ‘So long, Broadway.'”

The actor carved a niche for himself in the Western genre with Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian, Wagon Train, Bandolero! and Chisum - the last of these wherein he starred opposite John Wayne and Forrest Tucker in an adaptation of the Lincoln County War of 1878. For such a storied career, he received the Golden Boot Award in 2001.

From the 1980s onwards, Prine appeared in Weird Science, Dallas, Matlock, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and more recently, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Saving Grace.

He is survived by his wife Heather Lowe, who described him as the "sweetest prince," and his brother John, his nephews Nick and Kevin and their wives Rhonda and Kathy.