William Shatner On Parenting

How did you manage fatherhood and success while making the original 'Star Trek' series?

I'd rent an RV for the weekend and I'd work, that was the time of Star Trek I think and we'd film late Friday evening. By that time I had the RV all prepared, skis and everything and three little kids, three years apart in the RV. I'd drive up, a six-hour drive, they'd be asleep, I'd put them to bed and I'd drive. Two or three in the morning I'd get to the parking lot and park near the lift and fall into bed and sleep until seven or eight. I'd make breakfast for them, then I'd get them all out into the snowy parking lot. I'd dress them all in the boots and the hats and the gloves. I'd finally get the youngest one done last and she'd get out and she'd say, "I have to go to the bathroom", we go back and the others are saying, "I want to go skiing." I'd get all three onto a hill, put them in skis and deal with them all day and try and ski myself because I love to ski. And at the end of the day we'd have dinner, oh don't forget lunch, we had to all meet for lunch, and then dinner and undress them and gather them up and put them to bed and amuse them. So my children, who have, in two cases, two kids and in one case, one kid, are saying, "How did you do it without help or anything? We can't move, I'm not going to go to Mammoth without a nanny." And I'm saying I took three kids up there and I was an actor who finished working at ten o'clock Friday night. It was wild, but I never thought of it that way and fame certainly never entered into it. It was a harassed anguished daddy like so many of us around the country.

How did you maintain a relationship with your daughters after they grew up?

We've missed because my children now have children of their own so it's not as on the mark as it used to be but Sunday dinners, every Sunday it used to be, with all the children, either at a restaurant or at home. If I had somebody at home who would help me make a meal from time to time. Or, go to a restaurant, go to their favorite restaurant. Holidays with my kids, so we have a lot of memories.

What's the secret to being a good parent?

I don't know whether you push or you pull or you get out of the way. I don't know. Nobody knows, because it's an individual thing, and so much is conditional. By that I mean, you do it the way you were brought up, basically. You end up saying to yourself, "My mother used to do that. Why am I doing that?"