William Shatner, the 94-year-old Star Trek legend, was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital Wednesday after experiencing a medical emergency at his home.
The actor, best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk, called emergency services himself as a precaution after recognizing he needed medical attention over blood sugar complications. Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics transported him to a local hospital for evaluation.
Shatner’s agent Harry Gold confirmed the actor has been released and is doing well. “He’s fine,” Gold told TMZ, and said Shatner was “resting comfortably” during his hospital stay.
The incident occurred Wednesday afternoon at Shatner’s Los Angeles residence. This latest health scare adds to a series of medical challenges Shatner has faced in recent years. In March 2024, he revealed he had been diagnosed and successfully treated for stage 4 melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer.
Shatner initially discovered a lump under his right ear that his family doctor dismissed, telling him to massage and monitor it. After seeking a second opinion about a month later, he received the cancer diagnosis.
“It was melanoma, stage 4,” Shatner said. “I said, ‘Stage 4?’ And someone in the room said, ‘Sorry.’ I said, ‘What are you sorry about?’ It was like, ‘Better pack your things.’ That person who said ‘sorry,’ that was very sad, like ‘You are going to die.’ And I was. They said if this [treatment] they used did not work, I had about five months.”
Surgery and a strict immunotherapy regimen ultimately beat the cancer.
The actor also deals with permanent tinnitus, a ringing condition he developed after standing too close to a special effects explosion while filming the Star Trek episode “Arena” in 1967.
In 2016, Shatner faced another health scare when doctors suspected prostate cancer, though it turned out to be a false alarm caused by testosterone pills that elevated his PSA levels.
“But during those three months I was living with my death sentence, I spent considerable time thinking about my life, about the lessons I’ve learned, the places I’ve been, the miracles I’ve seen,” Shatner wrote in his 2018 memoir “Live Long And…: What I Learned Along the Way.”
Despite his advanced age and health challenges, Shatner maintains an remarkably active lifestyle. At age 90, he blasted off into space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket in 2021, calling the experience “profound” and filled with “the magic of the connection of all life on Earth.”
The 94-year-old continues working on projects tied to his Captain Kirk character and making public appearances. He recently announced plans to attend a “Space 2 Sea” convention in the Galapagos Islands in November, featuring guests like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and former NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan.