Vaughn Armstrong: My name is Vaughn Armstrong and I come from a little town in Southern California named Redlands, better known as 'felony flats'. Actually, the San Bernardino County doesn't have a whole lot to do there so the teenagers run around, get in trouble, drink and all of that. I feel very fortunate that I found a way out of that destruction. Now, there is a very nice community in many ways, but at the time, during the 60s, there was a lot of drug use and thank God for this theatre teacher who found something positive in my abilities and showed them to me and allowed me to pursue something that would get me out of trouble. In fact, it's kind of the reason I got into it. I attribute my success, what there is of it, to both she and my mother, who offered me money to get into a play because she saw I was kind of rowdy and liked to have fun and that my friends liked to have fun in ways that might get me sent to jail one day. So she offered money to audition for a play, I got into the play, I got the first, really good kiss I ever had in that play and that was it. I guess you could say, money and women was why I got into acting. Of course, reasons change as time goes on — I went to a performing arts school — University Center for Performing Arts, and there we all considered ourselves young geniuses and wanted to do art for art's sake. Then, of course, you move to Los Angeles and it becomes money and women again. And then, I got married, had two children, and the reasons change. Then, it's simply survival and putting your kids through school, putting shoes on their feet. You know, doing the profession for the reasons of finance and self-fulfillment, both.

Q: When did you get into acting?

VA: The year I first got into acting was 1966. I sort of hate to say that in a room like this, with people who were probably not born then. I'm just kidding... I moved to Los Angeles after going to a junior collage for a while. I moved to Los Angeles to be a star. I never had a single audition. So, I went to New Hampshire, I hitchhiked back. I found out I had been drafted. I went straight to Vietnam. I did not pass go or collect $200. I did, however, get out of the infantry and into entertainment. And in Vietnam, I actually built a theatre and produced a play called, "The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis" by Arthur Cobitt. There were no women in that play, the way, though I got a few volunteers to do something in the beginning, which we won't go into. But to get the guys to go to the play, you had to have a little flesh in it...I said we weren't going to go into that, didn't I? So we'll go on. And then I returned. Got back to Colorado Springs. Ran the theatre, I was the NCO in charge of Ford-Carson little theatre for about a year. Got out of that, went to a summer stock in Kansas where I met my wife of 25 years. Then, began working in Los Angeles and haven't really stopped since. I guess my first role in L.A. was in an ABC children's special, named, "My Dear Uncle Sherlock", with Royal Dano. You remember, Royal Dano? Great old character actor. Most famed for his role as Lincoln in Disneyland. I think he also did a film as Lincoln, as well...I'm not sure. He told me a great thing, he said, "Use their money. Go ahead. If you screw up keep going because it's not your film. It's not your money. Just do it until you feel you've got it right." I try not to do that. I try to get it right because I tried a couple of times and some of the producers didn't have his same philosophy. I found it's easier for a person who's been in it for 50 years to do that than somebody who's been in it for two years. They don't looking on it as lightly if you've been in it for two years. They think you're screwing up whereas if you've done it for fifty years, they think you're an artist. So that was my first television role. I did others, in the early days — Lou Grant, Wonder Woman, Remington Steele, a bunch of those. Just really never kind of stopped working.

Q: What are some of your recent roles?

VA: I have done "NYPD Blue". I did a "West Wing". I did a new one, called "Philly", that is another Stephen Botchco show where I play a wife-beater who kills us both finally out of love. (Takes deep breath) Theatre — yes, I get these great roles. I'm always either sitting in jail or dead.

Q: What is you love about acting?

VA: Everything. There is nothing that I don't love about acting. I love being on the set, I love the level of concentration it takes. I love the fact that I feel I have to be in good physical condition and good mental condition, that you have to maintain yourself in those times when you're not working, you have to maintain a degree of self-discipline.

Q: What's been the most challenging thing about Star Trek?

VA: It's all fairly challenging. I would call none of it hard. To me, digging a ditch is hard. All of Star Trek has been challenging. I would say the Hirogen makeup was probably the most challenging thing. Now, I love getting into characters and they're all very challenging but to pick out which character aspect would be most difficulties is hard to do. This makeup, boy, it comes up under the eye, here, and goes into the lip here. I think you also have contacts in that one so this portion of it was kind of pushing down on the eyeball, into the contact. It's a rubber mask...it's not rubber but I don't know what it is. I'm going to call it rubber. It's something like rubber — that has a neck that goes down into a rubber suit that covers your entire body and you have he gloves on that are rubber and the boots on that are rubber, so for me there's no place to sweat. And I sweat. My dad was a roofer — I don't know if I mentioned — and he used to have a perpetual...we used to watch him work occasionally ... he would have a perpetual drop of sweat coming off of his nose constantly. My brother and I would be taking bets on where it would drop or when. And I inherited that from him and in this Hirogen suit, if I would touch this cheek, sweat would come dripping out of my eye and out of my mouth because that was the only place that there was an exit. And people thought I was crying and drooling the whole time, and I said, "No, I'm just hot". So just remaining conscious in the heat, under the makeup, is probably the most challenging.

Q: What is your favorite character that you played?

VA: The Romulan would probably be the guy, Dr. Tellegrimore, was kind of a dichotomy that he was in a bad guy race. The Romulans are not known as the nicest people. But he had real family values. He was worried about his daughter and understood the need of the Voyager crew to get back and see their family, and I liked that about him. I also loved, of course, the first Klingon because he was the first role. And I got to go all out — it was entitled, "The Heart of Glory". I mentioned they were the 'bikers of the universe'. Rob Bowman directed that episode and that was a direction he gave me. He said, " These are the bikers of the universe". That was a lot of fun to play. of them all, those two....then again, Two of Nine was a lot of fun, too. You don't get a lot of opportunities to do these kind of roles anywhere else and they're all so very rich because they have their human elements, like I said, but then again they have these alien elements which can go over the top. You can use it to really play. Now, you have to make them believable and that's where the human comes in but particularly in roles like the Klingon you can just go mad.