Celebrity Equestrians: William Shatner

It’s time we talk William Shatner: actor, author and lifelong horse lover.

William Shatner is best known as Captain James T. Kirk of the original Star Trek series and more recently lawyer Denny Crane on Boston Legal. He also stars in Priceline commercials and made headlines in 2006 when he sold his own kidney stone to raise $25,000 for charity.

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As a man known for Sci-Fi, rather than Westerns, you might be surprised to hear that Shatner has been a horse lover for most of his life. “Horses have played an essential role in my life,” he writes in his autobiography, Up Till Now. “I have ridden horses, owned horses, and admired horses for as long as I can remember.”

Shatner grew up in Canada, on the outskirts of Montreal. As luck would have it, a rental stable was very near his home. “I remember going there all the time and having this sort of innate interest in riding, which I couldn’t fulfill at the time because of the expense involved. But I was just drawn there anyway — hanging around the rental stables without ever actually getting on a horse,” Shatner tells Cowboys and Indians.

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“My parents became aware of my new-found love because of the way I smelled. I’d ride my bike to the stable three or four times a week, sandwiching these trips between football and acting. Even those mongrel horses appealed to me. I was good at riding them, and they responded. I would often daydream about having a ranch, with my own horses,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

“One of the few times that work and my pastime overlapped was when I filmed the movie Alexander the Great. Because Alexander was legendary not only as a warrior but as a horseman, I spent six months learning to ride bareback for the title role.”

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It would be years before Shatner bought his own first horse. “It actually happened by accident. Years ago, I was at a quarter-horse auction near Visalia, California, and was introduced to a rather well-known local horse owner and his 10-year-old son. I had no plans whatsoever of buying a horse that day, but I was sitting there with them and suddenly the horse owner’s kid points at some gelding and says to me out of the blue, ‘That’s the horse you should buy.’ And I raised my hands in mock horror, like “‘Me? Buy a horse at an auction?!’ And then I hear the auctioneer saying, ‘And Shatner buys the horse at — .’ So suddenly I’d bought a horse that I had no intention of buying, but I was too embarrassed to say ‘No, no. I didn’t mean that.’ Anyway, we trained him and he became terrific and that was the day that my whole interest in quarter horses started.”

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I soon became living proof that you can’t buy one horse any more than you can eat one potato chip.” – William Shatner

He first worked with trainer Royce Cates and Saddlebreds before acquiring a horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky. When speaking about his famous Saddlebred stallion, Sultan’s Great Day, Shatner commented, “Great Day is to me what a Rodin statue is to an art collector, except that this work of art is alive.”

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His wife, Elizabeth, is also a leading trainer in Saddlebreds and a reiner. “She and I have won world championships on Saddlebreds, and I encouraged her to ride reiners as well, so we both ride competitively and occasionally against each other.”

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The actor’s interest swayed to American Quarter Horses and reining under the guidance of trainer Danny Gerardi around the same time he bought his second horse ranch in central California.

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Shatner told Cowboys and Indians magazine in 2009, “Every one of my horses has little charming traits that we work on and try to eliminate, but at the same time it makes them individuals and I find it hard to play favorites. I have one horse that’s 14 years old. She’s kind of old for a reiner, but she’s so broken and tries so hard all the time. So she’d be a favorite. But then there’s a new 4-year-old gelding — well, he’ll be 5 in a month — who’s as light and as happy as anything, and he’s a joy to ride, too.”

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Shatner’s well known for the Hollywood Charity Horse Show held annually in California. He took over the event many years ago when it was a Saddlebred show, but the actor’s interest in reining and Hollywood fame converted the competition into a true star-studded affair complete with musician Willie Nelson, actress Kaley Cuoco and none other than Leonard Nimoy himself appearing ringside over the years.

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It is Spock on a horse. My life is complete.

Go Riding!