The actor René Auberjonois (photo ©Kyle Cassidy) passed away yesterday, December 8, 2019, due to lung cancer.
René Murat Auberjonois was born on June 1, 1940 in New York, USA, to a family with a complex family tree whose ancestors included the royals of Naples Gioacchino Murat and Carolina Bonaparte, Napoleon’s younger sister. More recently, in his family there have been artists such as his paternal grandfather, who was a painter, and his father, who was a writer and a journalist.
After World War II, René Auberjonois’ family moved to Paris, France, where the young René decided he would become an actor. After a few years the family returned to the USA. In the early 1960s he started working with theater companies across the USA and in 1968 also on Broadway in various productions. His participation in theatrical productions was never completely interrupted even after he established himself as an actor in television and cinema and over time he also became a theater director.
René Auberjonois’ cinema career began with a couple of roles as an extra artist and then got his first major role in the 1970 movie “M*A*S*H” and work again with director Robert Altman in the movies “Brewster McCloud” (1970) and “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971). On television he was a guest star on several TV shows during the 1970s but his first major role came when he joined the cast of the TV show “Benson” in its second season to stay there until its seventh and last season. In the 1980s, René Auberjonois extended his roles to animated movies and TV shows, lending his voice to many characters.
René Auberjonois joined the universe of Star Trek with a little role in the 1991 movie “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” but is really known for the role of shapeshifter Odo in the TV show “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine“. Over the years he also lent his voice to some video games connected to that show.
In the last decade René Auberjonois played a regular character in the TV show “Boston Legal” and kept on being very active in productions of different types, also working as a narrator of documentaries. These activities continued into this decade as well, showing how eclectic he was.
