Stage and Screen Actor Rene Auberjonois Has Died at 79

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that Rene Auberjonois, a stage and screen actor best known for his work on Star Trek, has died. According to Variety, he died from lung cancer. He was 79.

Rene had his first theater job at the age of 16, as an apprentice at a theater in Stratford, Connecticut.

He attended Carnegie-Mellon University and studied theater, learning about acting and about the process of producing a play. After graduating from CMU, René acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum.

His Broadway credits include Dance of the Vampires, City of Angels, Metamorphosis, Big River, Break a Leg, The Good Doctor, Twelfth Night, Fire!, A Cry of Players, and King Lear.

In 1969, he won a Tony Award for his role in Coco, alongside Katharine Hepburn. His most recent Broadway credit was as Jethro Crouch in a Sly Fox, which earned him an Outer Circle Critics Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

Rene is best known for his role as Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Since DS9 ended in 1999, René has kept busy as a guest star on numerous television series (including The Practice, Judging Amy, Enterprise, and Frasier) and with acting roles in films (including The Patriot with Mel Gibson) and on theatre stages in Los Angeles and New York. He was most recently on ABC's TV series Boston Legal as Paul Lewiston, colleague and nemesis to Alan Shore (James Spader) and Denny Crane (William Shatner).