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Jeff Bezos is a long-time Star Trek fan. The entrepreneur and creator of Amazon has discussed his love of the series and all things sci-fi, and how they’ve inspired several of his company’s most famous products. What a lot of people don’t know, is the fact that he had a cameo in one of the Star Trek films.
Jeff Bezos had a cameo in “Star Trek: Beyond,” the last film of the most recent Star Trek trilogy starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldaña. It was released in 2016, with Bezos playing the part of an alien Starfleet officer, wearing copious amounts of prosthetics and green makeup. He even has a line, saying “speak normally” to another alien. While his part is small, Bezos ensured that it was important enough so that it wouldn’t be cut from the final edit of the movie.
Bezos has had a long history with Star Trek, being close friends with William Shatner, the lead of one of the iterations of the series. The two went to space together, with Bezos taking some of the Star Trek drawings he made when he was 9 years old.
At the 2016 Pathfinder Awards at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, Bezos explained his love for Star Trek, which started when he was very young, and how he acquired his sought-after cameo. “For years, I have been begging Paramount to let me be in a Star Trek movie,” he said. “I was very persistent. I can imagine the poor director who got the call, you know, ‘you have to let Jeff Bezos be in your Star Trek movie.’” Bezos told the director he’d put on any amount of makeup on, anything to distract viewers from realizing he’s in the film. “But I want a speaking part,” Bezos said.
Bezos’ love of Star Trek goes beyond having speaking parts in the films; according to an interview with The Washington Post, he said that the Amazon Echo was inspired on the show. “Our vision was that, in the long term, it would become like the Star Trek computer,” he said.