http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0555846/ I hadn’t heard this story, and I don’t really believe it, but it’s funny. It seems that Mr.Plummer, ahem, “injured” himself during some sort of one-night stand, and couldn’t go on to perform in Henry V. This left the spot open for his understudy, Captain Kirk himself. “I knew then that the SOB was going to be a ‘star.’” This is particularly amusing, if true, in the context of Star Trek VI where Plummer plays a Shakespeare-spouting enemy Klingon.
I heard Christopher Plummer tell this story when interviewed on CBC Radio’s Q show. So I’m pretty sure it is real. The show was at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada in the 1950s.
It is as stated in Mr. Plummer’s book “In Spite of Myself,” pg 210.
Oh, I’m sure he tells it as a true story, I’m just questioning the veracity of the whole “I knew then that he was going to be a star” thing.