"Star Trek" actor Lawrence Montaigne, who at one point was expected to replace Leonard Nimoy on the original series, died Friday. He was 86.
Montaigne's daughter, Jessica, took to Facebook to alert the public that her dad had died, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Montaigne is mostly known for playing a Romulan and then a Vulcan on episodes of "Star Trek."
He came close to joining the series permanently when Nimoy was in talks to leave the show for a CBS crime drama, "Mission: Impossible," The Hollywood Reported said.
Montaigne spoke about this in a 2012 interview with StarTrek.com.
"They did the contracts and the whole thing, but there was a stipulation in the contract that said if Leonard comes back, then the whole thing is over," he said, at the time. "I was going on the assumption that I was going to play Spock when my agent called and said, 'Leonard is coming back to do the show. He's in and you're out."
"A week or two later, they called me to do this role of Stonn, who was a Vulcan," Montaigne added. "It all boiled down to the fact that Leonard and I looked alike to a great extent. I guess that's what they were looking for with Stonn."
Montaigne also appeared in the 1953 musical "The Band Wagon," the 1963 war classic "The Great Escape," ABC's "Batman," among other shows, The Economic Times noted.
He's appeared in films, including "Tobruk" in 1967, "The Power" in 1968, "The Psycho Lover" in 1970, and "Escape to Witch Mountain" in 1975.
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