Michael George Ansara was an American actor. He portrayed Cochise in the television series Broken Arrow, Kane in the 1979–1981 series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Commander Kang in Star Trek: The Original Series.
Ansara received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in the television industry, located at 6666 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 1994, Ansara portrayed the Technomage Elric in the Babylon 5 episode “The Geometry of Shadows”. Ansara was nominated for a Saturn Award and has won a Western Heritage Award for Rawhide.
He is one of nine actors to play the same character (in his case the Klingon commander Kang) on three Star Trek television series – the original series (“Day of the Dove”), Deep Space Nine (“Blood Oath”) and Voyager (“Flashback”).
Ansara married Barbara Eden, who co-starred with him in Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The couple had a son, Matthew Ansara. Ansara and Eden divorced in 1974, and he married actress Beverly Kushida in 1977.
On June 25, 2001, his son Matthew died from a drug overdose in Monrovia, California. Ansara was a Greek Orthodox Christian.
Ansara died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Calabasas on July 31, 2013, at the age of 91. His interment is at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, next to his son Matthew.
Michael George Ansara’s ex-wife, Barbara Eden is an American actress, singer, and producer best known for her starring role as Jeannie in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).
Other notable roles include Roslyn Pierce opposite Elvis Presley in Flaming Star (1960), Lieutenant (JG) Cathy Connors in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) and a single widowed mother, Stella Johnson, in the film Harper Valley PTA (1978).