Michael Forest, the durable character actor who played the Greek god Apollo on the original Star Trek and filled Roger Corman’s drive-in pictures for years, has died at 97 after a working life that ran from soaps to voice booths.
Deadline reported that Forest died October 14 at age 97. He had most recently lived at an assisted living facility in Sparks, Nevada. His friend James A. Brown announced the death on Facebook.
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. His wife, actress Diana Hale, died in 2022. No cause of death was released.
Born Gerald Michael Charlebois on April 17, 1929, in Harvey, North Dakota, he moved to Los Angeles in 1955 and met director Roger Corman through an acting class. That introduction led to steady work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the kind of grind that once built Hollywood’s middle class of screen performers.
Forest’s early credits included Corman titles such as Beast From Haunted Cave in 1959, Ski Troop Attack in 1960, and Atlas in 1961, along with The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent in 1958. The pictures were cheap, fast, and unpretentious. They also kept actors employed.
Television soon became his main stage. In 1964 he turned up on The Dick Van Dyke Show as a former boyfriend of Laura Petrie who had become a priest, with Sally Rogers trying to set the scene. The same year he played a member of an alien biker gang in The Twilight Zone episode “Black Leather Jackets.”
His best-known face came in 1967, when he played the Greek god Apollo in the Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Fans still mark that turn. One reader reaction after the death notice put it simply: “I mourn for Adonis.”
"I mourn for Adonis."
Decades later, in 2013, he reprised Apollo in the fan-made web series Star Trek Continues. Another commenter wrote, “He did live long and prospered.”
"🖖 He did live long and prospered."
Guest spots filled the decades between: Gunsmoke, Have Gun, Will Travel, Maverick, Mission: Impossible, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, Gomer Pyle: USMC, I Spy, The Outer Limits, The Rookies, Who’s the Boss, Silk Stalkings, and more. Soap fans knew him as well, including work on As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless. One viewer recalled loving him “as Kim’s husband Steve Andropolis, on ATWT.” Stories of long-running soap careers still draw attention when another familiar face is gone, much as coverage did after a Days of Our Lives actor’s death in recent memory.
By the 1990s and 2000s Forest had largely shifted into voice and dubbing work, including Power Rangers, Dynasty Warriors, World of Warcraft, and extensive anime credits. The source account described appearances across hundreds of animated projects. In 2000 he also played a pilot in the Tom Hanks film Cast Away.
That pattern, early B-movie labor, endless network guest roles, then voice booths, is the opposite of celebrity culture’s short attention span. It is closer to a trade. Other recent losses in the acting ranks, from a Beverly Hills, 90210 actor’s death at 76 to wider mourning for veteran screen names, have underscored how many careers were built the same way: show up, hit the mark, move on to the next call.
Forest’s death at 97 closes a file that began in a North Dakota town and ran through Corman’s sets, network backlots, and a final chapter in Nevada assisted living. Public detail stopped there. No official statement beyond the friend’s Facebook announcement was cited, and funeral arrangements were not listed in the initial report.
Readers who track high-profile farewells will see the same week’s news cycle fold in other screen names, including tributes when Tim Curry’s death at 80 drew headlines and separate shock around younger stars such as coverage of RJ Mitte’s death at 34. Forest’s story sits in a different lane: long life, steady credits, little scandal, and a signature sci-fi role that outlived the network schedule that created it.
Sudden or unusual celebrity deaths still jolt the public, as when a former child actor died after a tiger enclosure incident. Forest’s passing was quieter. The record is a stack of episode titles, a handful of drive-in posters, a god on a 1960s starship, and a friend logging the news online.
A culture that chases overnight fame could use more of the old model he represented: learn the craft, take the work, and let the credits speak when you are gone.