Biography

March 14, 1954 · Chicago, Illinois, USA

Adrian George Zmed

5′ 8½″ (1.74 m)

Babyfaced swarthy actor playing rebellious Italian descent teenagers.

[1983] Preachers' kids have a sense of rebellion in them.

[Of William Shatner]: Yeah, absolutely. I learned so much just watching him. Most of my work was onstage and, like I mentioned before, because I teach the class now, it's a very different energy on camera than onstage. Instead of reaching the last person 50 rows away from you, you're reaching someone three feet in front of you, which is really daunting. Three feet in front of you as opposed to 100 feet toward the back of the theater. His camera technique was just incredible. He was so relaxed and all. I learned so much in term of the moment, on how you readjust your energy, how you get efficient with camera technique. And just the stories. When he directed, he would mentor me. I do consider Bill a mentor, no question about it. We had a wonderful relationship and we're still very good friends.

[on his on- and off-screen chemistry with William Shatner, who played T.J. Hooker]: He's crazy in terms of practical jokes and things like that. He's probably the most fun guy you could possibly imagine off-camera. [Cackles] There was one time...You know what a tow-shot is? It's when they're filming us and we're talking in the squad car and there's actually a truck pulling you and the whole camera crew is on the back of the truck. Well, it got to a point where they didn't even need to tow us anymore. They just mounted the cameras on the sides of the car, and they just sent us out with a cop in front of us and a cop in back of us. And we would just do all the car shots for maybe two or three episodes, just him and me. We called it 'Shatner-Zmed Productions.' And I had all the sound and the camera switch and everything in my lap and basically, we'd slate it, 'This is Show Number 1242. Scene 14. Take 1,' and we'd do a high-five for the mark. Well, one day, we decided we were gonna play around. We were driving down Sunset Boulevard, and we picked up some ladies of the night. [Laughs] And we put them in the back of the car. We did this whole scene with them, and apparently, Aaron Spelling was not too happy when he saw that in dailies. We weren't allowed to do that anymore. But we did have a lot of fun together.

[When asked if William Shatner talks this way off-camera]: We started shooting T.J. Hooker, I suddenly, slowly saw, that Bill does not really speak this way, that he speaks like in certain speech patterns. He really doesn't talk like that, he's a normal human being, who talks like everybody else, and I suddenly realized, when I was doing acting with him, sitting at home, next to him and was getting a close-up and everything and I'm off-camera, standing next to the camera. He's doing it, he's looking at his cue card, while he's saying his lines, and then, the lines run out there, and the lines are on the desk and he looks at them, over there, on the wall. They are on the wall, they're on the wall. He used those words, over there and then, he runs out of words, over there, and then, they're on the floor, over there. And that's how he was searching for his lines, over there and they finally got that switch pattern.

[Who responded if William Shatner once used teleprompters]: Well, no, because you can't look directly into that camera. It's not like you're doing the news; they have to be everywhere, all over the place if he's thinking and he's looking at the desk, he's kind of like in thought, which is what it always was. I can do 1 hour on the "Shatner Story," and what we did in 5 years, I spent 15 hours with Bill in the squad car, I mean, we got to know each other, very well, we've kept each other, by practical jokes.