Michael Forest, the towering character actor beloved by Star Trek fans as the Greek god Apollo in the 1967 episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?", died on October 14 at age 97, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter.

He passed away at an assisted living facility in Sparks, Nevada, and his longtime friend James A. Brown announced the news Friday in a Facebook post: "I knew him as an actor and loved him as a friend," Brown wrote, per Page Six. No further details were provided, Wide Open Country reports.

For Star Trek devotees, Forest was not just another guest star. Page Six reports that Forest later admitted the role gave him his "15 minutes of fame," and in 2013 he reprised Apollo in the fan-produced web series Star Trek Continues, working alongside his late wife Diana Hale as Athena.

Wide Open Country quotes a fan on X calling his closing invocation of the other gods "so powerful."

The Hollywood Reporter traces Forest's break to an acting class where he met Roger Corman, leading to The Saga of the Viking Women, Beast From Haunted Cave, Ski Troop Attack and Atlas — he told Tom Weaver's 2001 book he held out for $500 a week, "big bucks" over the $350 minimum.

Daily Mail adds that between 1968 and 1978, while living in Rome, he dubbed more than 500 films, and under the alias Alfred Thor voiced English dubs of anime like Akira, Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

The surprise in this obituary is how many corners of pop culture Forest touched. Nine days after playing an alien biker in The Twilight Zone's "Black Leather Jackets," he appeared on The Dick Van Dyke Show as Laura Petrie's ex, now a priest, The Hollywood Reporter recounts.

Page Six notes he was one of 40 Star Trek actors in Snoop Dogg's 2020 parody film Unbelievable!!!!!, and he played a pilot in Cast Away (2000).

Page Six highlights a 2012 startrek.com interview in which Forest revealed he had to read for Star Trek's producers three times, taking his shirt off to show his muscles and refusing a requested British accent in favor of what he called Mid-Atlantic theater speech — a reading that won him the role.

Fans are also quoting his reflection that "acting has its ups and its downs," a line The Hollywood Reporter pulled from his remarks about a career he took pride in despite its material.

Forest, born Gerald Michael Charlebois in Harvey, North Dakota, on April 17, 1929, was married to actress Diana Hale for 52 years until her death in 2022, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

Deadline notes complete information on survivors was not immediately available, and Daily Mail says his final screen role came at 90 in the short film When the Train Stops (2019).