René Auberjonois

The Legacy of Paintbrushes and the Stage

René Auberjonois was born in New York in 1940, surrounded by paintbrushes and newspaper stories. His grandfather was a renowned Swiss painter and his father a respected writer for Time magazine. That environment of intellectuals shaped his view of acting as a hands-on, artisanal craft.

In 1969, he won a Tony Award for his role in the musical Coco. He shared the stage with Katharine Hepburn, and that experience taught him that the stage was his real home base. But movies soon came knocking, thanks to director Robert Altman.

He played Father Mulcahy in the movie M*A*S*H in 1970. It was a dry role that let him break into the Hollywood circuit without giving up his New York identity. For him, acting was a precise technical craft rather than a pursuit of fame.

He never set out to be a star.

Makeup as a Narrative Refuge

In 1993 he accepted the role of Odo in the series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He spent three hours a day in the makeup chair having a latex mask applied that erased his facial features. That challenge forced him to work only with his eyes and body language across seven seasons.

The result was a character whose appeal lay in his physical stiffness. He recorded 173 episodes at Paramount's studios and used breaks to direct several episodes of the same production. So his involvement in the franchise went well beyond the hours spent in front of the camera.

She voiced the chef Louis in the Disney film The Little Mermaid in 1989. The song she performed was recorded in just a few takes because she was going for an over-the-top, almost aggressive tone that would contrast with the sweetness of the rest of the film. But her career didn't stop at animation or science fiction.

The pace of work never let up.

Boston Stints and the End of the Road

He joined the cast of Boston Legal in 2004 to play Paul Lewiston. He was the stern counterpoint to the lead characters and appeared in 71 episodes of the series. He proved he could keep up with David E. Kelley's rapid-fire dialogue without losing the composure the law firm demanded.

In 2019 he shot the film First Cow under director Kelly Reichardt. It was one of his last roles before he died in December of that same year at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79 years old, and lung cancer brought an end to a career that racked up more than 200 credits on screen.

His personal archive of scripts and production notes was donated to the University of California after his death.

The auction of his personal belongings in 2020 raised funds for various social causes tied to acting in New York.