Star Trek

Lloyd at "Star Trek" 2009 premiere

At the time he played Kruge, the renegade Klignon commander of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Christopher Lloyd was just coming off his second Emmy win for comedy lead actor as Rev. Jim Ignatowski in ABC’s long-running Taxi. His even bigger splash as Doc Brown in the beloved Back to the Future trilogy was still three years away.

Born in 1938 in Stamford, Conn., Lloyd capped an early string in Broadway plays with his breakthrough in film as one of the psychiatric patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Other iconic roles came as Professor Plum in Clue, Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Uncle Fester in the initial movie version of The Addams Family, amid a host of other credits. He even played himself as "Rev. Jim" 20 years after Taxi in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man in the Moon. 

Lloyd remains in demand for his flamboyant iconoclasts, bringing them to recent series like Chuck and Fringe. Other roles come via reunions with any of his old co-stars on their current projects—from Spin City with Michael J. Fox to Everything’s Sunny in Philadelphia with Danny Devito and Numb3rs with Judd Hirsch. Then again, his guest turn as Professor Dimple in Disney Channel’s Return to Avonlea won him his third Emmy in 1992.