Aside from his iconic Star Trek roles, William Shatner has made headlines over the years for his relationships.
Shatner and actress Gloria Rand tied the knot in August 1956 after meeting on the set of a television play called Dreams. The pair welcomed daughter Leslie in 1958, followed by Lisabeth in 1961 and Melanie in 1964. After 13 years of marriage, Shatner and Rand called it quits in 1969.
Following his split from Rand, Shatner began dating Marcy Lafferty after meeting on the set of the 1970 film The Andersonville Trial. The pair wed in 1973.
After an amicable divorce with Lafferty in 1996, Shatner met Nerine Kidd at a hotel bar in Toronto and eventually tied the knot with her in 1997. Kidd, who struggled with addiction through the years, died in August 1999 at the age of 40 after being found unconscious in the pool.
“Sometimes I berate her for not having stopped drinking,” Shatner recalled in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2008. “Sometimes I tell her it’s OK, that I am thinking about her, that she is alive in my mind. But you never get over it.”
Following Kidd’s death in 1999, Shatner began communicating with Elizabeth Martin, who owned and operated a horse stable in Montecito. The pair tied the knot in 2001 before filing for divorce in 2019.
Nearly four years after their split, Shatner shared that he was living with Martin again — and that they had reconciled.
“We’ve in effect remarried. But we haven’t done another ceremony,” he told Parade in a March 2024 interview.
Keep scrolling to learn more about Shatner’s relationships through the years:
William Shatner’s 1st Wife: Gloria Rand
Shatner and Rand met in the mid-1950s on the set of the TV play called Dreams, which was written by Shatner.
“I wrote a television drama, in which I cast the girl that I subsequently married and became the mother of my three children,” the actor said in a previous interview with the Archive of American Television.
The duo tied the knot in August 1956 and went on to welcome daughter Leslie, daughter Lisabeth and daughter Melanie in 1958, 1961 and 1964, respectively.
Shatner and Rand eventually split in 1969, with Shatner claiming that the marriage was “lopsided” and that he “wasn’t good at being married.”
“I was working so hard to support my family and resented Gloria because I was getting so little joy out of my marriage,” he said in his 2008 autobiography, Up Till Now. “She resented me for … for probably many reasons. So Gloria stayed home with our girls and it seemed like each week new and beautiful — and seemingly available — women showed up on the set.”
William Shatner’s 2nd Wife: Marcy Lafferty
After his divorce from Rand in 1969, Shatner met Lafferty on the set of the 1970 movie The Andersonville Trial. After they began dating and she developed close relationships with Shatner’s daughters, the pair got married in October 1973. They ended up going their separate ways in 1996.
“The failure of our marriage certainly wasn’t her fault,” Shatner explained in his 2008 autobiography. “Where divorce is concerned, it takes two to tangle. And I played my part. I certainly played my part.”
Shatner went on to say that “the reality of some marriages is that over time, a husband and wife grow apart.”
“Their needs and desires changed. Marcy realized that; in fact, she once told a reporter, ‘Life took us apart, and it was time to move on,’” he recalled in Up Till Now.
William Shatner’s 3rd Wife: Nerine Kidd
Following his split from Lafferty, Shatner met Kidd at a hotel bar in Toronto while he was directing an episode of the show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues in 1994.
“I was there meeting an old friend of mine and we were laughing maybe too loudly, and I looked over his shoulder and saw her,” he wrote in Up Till Now in 2008.
The twosome tied the knot in November 1997 “against the advice of [Shatner’s] family and friends” due to Kidd’s alcoholism.
“I absolutely worshipped her, and I thought, stupidly, that I could heal her,” Shatner told the Sydney Morning Herald in a 2008 interview, noting that Kidd was sober at the time before waking up the next morning drunk. “Later, I found she had hidden bottles of vodka all over the house.”
Kidd tragically died in August 1999 after Shatner discovered her unconscious in the pool of their California home and pulled her out before calling 911.
“I don’t think you ever really get over an event like that,” Shatner recalled in his autobiography in 2008. “You deal with the grief, then as that passes, you absorb the substance, and it becomes part of you.”
One year after Kidd’s death, Shatner founded a charity called the Nerine Shatner Foundation, which was connected to a halfway house with room for 11 women.
“Women came up to me and say: ‘You saved my life.’ But not me; it was Nerine. She did that,” he said in a May 2021 interview with The Guardian.
William Shatner’s 4th Wife: Elizabeth Martin
After Kidd’s tragic death, Shatner received “hundreds of letters from people offering their condolences or advice or sympathy” including from Martin, whose letter caught his eye due to her calligraphy. The pair ended up connecting over their love of horses and they ended up getting married in February 2001.
“She understood my grief because she had nursed her husband in cancer for a year and a half, who died about two years before Nerine died,” Shatner said in an interview on Larry King Live in 2002. “I lucked out. You met my wife Elizabeth, a most wonderful, loving person. I was so lucky in finding somebody.”
Although Martin and Shatner divorced in December 2019, the couple reconnected and got back together.
“I’ve often heard about married couples being partners in life and I think that’s what Elizabeth and I have achieved,” he told Parade in a March 2024 interview. “I think we’re partners. We help each other with our lives.”
