Overview (4)

Mini Bio (1)

René Murat Auberjonois was born on June 1, 1940 in New York City, to Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline (Murat), who was born in Paris, and Fernand Auberjonois, who was Swiss-born. René was born into an already artistic family, which included his grandfather, a well-known Swiss painter, and his father, a Pulitzer-nominated writer and Cold War-era foreign correspondent. The Auberjonois family moved to Paris shortly after World War II, and it was there that René made an important career decision at the age of six. When his school put on a musical performance for the parents, little René was given the honor of conducting his classmates in a rendition of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?". When the performance was over, René took a bow, and, knowing that he was not the real conductor, imagined that he had been acting. He decided then and there that he wanted to be an actor. After leaving Paris, the Auberjonois family moved into an Artist's Colony in upstate New York.



At an early age, René was surrounded by musicians, composers and actors. Among his neighbors were Helen Hayes, Burgess Meredith and John Houseman, who would later become an important mentor. Houseman gave René his first theater job at the age of 16, as an apprentice at a theater in Stratford, Connecticut. René would later teach at Juilliard under Houseman. René attended Carnegie-Mellon University and studied theater completely, not only learning about acting but about the entire process of producing a play. After graduating from CMU, René acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. In 1969, he won a role in his first Broadway musical, "Coco" (with Katharine Hepburn), for which he won a Tony Award.



Throughout his life, René acted in a variety of theater productions, films and television presentations, including a rather famous stint as Clayton Endicott III on the comedy series Benson (1979), not to mention seven years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) as Odo. René also performed dramatic readings of a variety of books on tape, and appeared in projects like Der Patriot (2000), starring Mel Gibson, Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000), and NBC's Frasier (1993) and ABC's Practice: Die Anwälte (1997).

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Carolyn R. Fulton crfulton@renefiles.com

Spouse (1)

Judith Helen Mahalyi (19 October 1963 - 8 December 2019) ( his death) ( 2 children)

Trivia (29)

Won Broadway's 1970 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical) for "Coco". He was also nominated as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) in 1974 for "The Good Doctor", and as Best Actor (Featured Role - Musical) in 1985 for "Big River" and in 1990 for "City of Angels".



His mother was Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline Murat (November 13, 1913 - May 10, 1986) and on her side, René was the great-great-great-grandson of Joachim [Napoléon] Murat, King of Naples and King of Sicily, formerly Grand-Duke of Berg and Kleve, and of his wife (Marie Annonciade) Caroline Bonaparte, sister of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France.



Attended and graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University.



Taught acting at Juilliard.



Tried changing his surname very early on to "Aubert" because casting directors were unable to pronounce "Auberjonois" (which is pronounced roughly as "oh-bear-zhon-wah"). When he discovered that his new name caused just as much trouble, he decided to keep the real one.





Was one of only 32 actors or actresses to have starred in both the original Star Trek (up to and including Star Trek VI: Das unentdeckte Land (1991)) and then in one of the spin-offs. His role in the original Star Trek was uncredited as Colonel West in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (a film that counts as part of the original Star Trek series).

Grandson of well-known Swiss post-impressionist painter René Auberjonois (1872-1957).





Had appeared in two different productions which featured a character named General Hammond: M.A.S.H. (1970) and Stargate: Kommando SG-1 (1997).



Both he and his Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) co-star Colm Meaney appeared in "Stargate", playing the leader of a human civilization on another planet whose population lived under the surface. In both cases, the main characters of the series in question attempted to form an alliance and arrange an exchange of technology before learning that this civilization could not be trusted. Auberjonois played Alar, leader of the Eurondans in the Stargate: Kommando SG-1 (1997) episode "The Other Side"; Meaney played Cowen, leader of the Genii in the Stargate: Atlantis (2004) episodes "Underground" and "The Storm".



Outside of the Raumschiff Enterprise (1966) cast, he was the oldest Star Trek cast member until his death.



Turned down the role of Father Mulcahy on the television series M*A*S*H (1972). He had played the role in the 1969 motion picture version.



Is mentioned in "Big Lou", the biography of actor Louis Edmonds , because he and Edmonds both starred in an avant garde Broadway play that flopped after just a few performances in the late 1960s. The play was called "Fire!" and it is covered in detail in "Big Lou".



Had appeared in both Batman (1992) and Batman Forever (1995), both as characters with the title of Doctor: Dr. March in the former and Dr. Burton in the latter. In the former, as Dr. March, he also made an homage to Batman (1989) with a line referring to bats as survivors.

His father was Swiss, of Swiss-French descent, and was born in Valeyres-sous-Montagny. René's maternal grandparents were Prince Michel Anne Charles Joachim Napoléon Murat, who was born in Oleksandrivs'k, Luhans'ka oblast, Ukraine, and Hélène Macdonald Stallo, who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His maternal grandfather's mother was a Russian noblewoman, and his maternal grandfather's paternal grandmother was also an American from Charleston, South Carolina. René's mother's ancestry was Russian, German, French, Corsican Italian, Scottish, English, and distant Tatar.



Siblings: Anne and Michael Auberjonois. Stepsiblings: Ghislaine Vautier (author) and Marie-Laure Degener (opera performer).



He was awarded the 1982 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "The Misanthrope" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.



He was awarded the 1981 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Twelfth Night" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.



He was awarded the 1981 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Chekhov in Yalta" at the Mark Taper Forum Theater in Los Angeles, California.



He was awarded the 1983 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for "Richard III" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.





His stage work included portraying Juror #5 in the Washington D.C. production of "Twelve Angry Men". His castmates included Roy Scheider as Juror #8, and Robert Prosky as Juror #3.

Was inducted into The Actors Hall of Fame.





As a teen growing up in an artist colony in the Hudson River Valley along the base of the Ramapo Mountains near New City, NY, Auberjonois babysat for the family of Bill Mauldin , the cartoonist who had recently costarred with Audie Murphy in Die rote Tapferkeitsmedaille (1951), and whose "Willie and Joe" characters had represented and spoke for U.S. infantry "dogfaces" on the European front during the Second World War.

He is the first regular cast member of one of the "Star Trek" spin-off series to die.



Has three grandchildren.



Alumnus of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU); School of Drama, class of 1962.



Personal Quotes (18)

My wife, Judith, is the best person in the world.



I'm never going to retire. I'll die with my boots on.



I do the conventions now for two reasons. To raise money for Doctors Without Borders and travel.



I just wait for something to present itself, and then I consider it.



I did a different voice for Odo. When people hear my real voice, they're often confused.



I came out of repertory theater, where I worked 50 weeks a year, and I loved working with a team.



How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out of ideas?





I worked with my son [ Remy Auberjonois ] when he was much younger; we did L.A. Law - Staranwälte, Tricks, Prozesse (1986) together, where I played his father and he played a kid who was suing his father for alienation of affection. We're actually very affectionate.

I would hardly call myself an artist in that sense; I doodle, I draw, I'm not a trained artist, I couldn't sit down and do an accurate portrait of anyone.



And so I've always been fascinated by the technical end of theater, and a lot of my closest friends are not actors, but in other aspects of the business.



And my father, being a good Swiss Protestant, always insisted that if I was going to be an actor, I shouldn't just be an actor, I should know about the whole process.



The best part is the part I'm working at the moment.



It always takes a while to find out who the characters are.



If you do your job properly, you usually learn a lot about yourself from any role you play.



My daughter is here in town doing a play, and her dog is staying with us. We live up in the hills, so he has access to thousands of acres of wilderness.



The mask of the character was already written into the show, but I actually lobbied for a denser and more complete mask than they initially considered.



At this point we've answered about every question you could possibly imagine about Deep Space Nine, so at conventions we do this thing called Theatrical Jazz, where we do a show of bits and pieces of things from plays and literature, poetry... stuff that we like.



Deep Space Nine dwelt on a darker plane than the previous, wonderful versions-the original and Next Generation, wonderful series without which we could have never existed. Deep Space Nine had a darker, more neurotic kind of outlook in the characters. The characters had darker sides to them.

