William Shatner: I've only just learnt how to act

William Shatner is pleased he's finally started to understand how to act.

The 84-year-old star trained as a Shakespearean actor and began treading the boards in 1954. He later moved into film and TV, with his most famous character Star Trek's James T. Kirk.

Despite all this, it's only recently he feels he's really honed his craft.

"My mind doesn’t work that way," he told British newspaper The Guardian when asked what he's proudest of. "But as the years have passed, I’ve begun to understand how to act. I’m not joking when I say I think I discovered how to do it not too long ago."

William's Star Trek co-star Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, passed away in February. He is still coming to terms with the loss, as he and Leonard had so much shared history having worked on the sci-fi franchise for so long.

"I’m writing a book about Leonard. I had a brother, whose life arc was so much like mine that we understood each other completely – our age, our birth, the same types of problems in our marriages – our careers arced in the same manner," he said. "We had a great deal in common, Leonard and I. And thusly we were able to understand each other. I’ve lost a dear friend."

Star Trek has now moved on, with a new generation of stars appearing in the films. Among them are Benedict Cumberbatch and Chris Pine. Although William has made peace with the idea now, initially he was a little upset about it.

"When they said something else was going down, and they were stopping our films, I was enjoying the ageing process: playing a hero losing his powers, who had to be careful who he fought and how much he did," he admitted. "I was acquainted with all that, as a human being, and I was looking forward to painting that in the films. I subsequently did it, in the books I wrote. Many of those Star Trek books I wrote are autobiographical."