Actor George Takei has been an activist since his teenage years, but it wasn’t for another 50 years that his activism could expand to include the issue most personal to him: sexual orientation.
Takei discussed his life as a closeted actor and how he came out at age 68, with Meg Lemke, graphic novels editor at Publishers Weekly, at the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia on June 28. His coming out is also the subject of his new memoir, It Rhymes with Takei (Top Shelf Productions).
As a teenager growing up in southern California, Takei’s father impressed upon him the importance of community involvement. Takei recalled, “My father explained that we lived in what was called a democracy, but that democracy is dependent on people who understand that there’s a responsibility that citizens had.”
Taking these words to heart, in high school Takei ran for and was elected senior board president and volunteered with the Red Cross. He worked in his twenties on Adlai Stevenson’s third presidential campaign in 1960.
But as an aspiring actor, he felt that activism about LGBTQ+ equality was impossible. “My heartthrob was Tab Hunter,” Takei said, referring to one of the most popular movie stars of the late 1950s. But Takei saw how Hunter’s career suffered after a tabloid magazine exposed him as gay. “I got it,” Takei recalled. “I could not be an actor if it was known I felt the way I did.”
Takei achieved success as an actor, most famously as Hikaru Sulu on the late-1960s sci-fi TV series Star Trek. In his book he discusses how he presented a public persona that was similar to who he really was, but not entirely the same. “You used the metaphor that you learned to live as a rhyme of yourself,” Lemke said.
On Star Trek, science fiction was frequently used as metaphor and commentary on the social movements of the 1960s. “We had this acronym, IDIC, which stood for infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” Takei explained. “[But] one area [Star Trek creator] Gene [Roddenberry] never touched was equality for LGBTQ people.”
Eventually, Takei asked Roddenberry why. “‘I’m walking a tightrope as I am dealing with these controversial issues,’” Takei recalled him saying. Many TV stations in the South had refused to air an episode that included the first scripted kiss between a Black and white actor on US television. Roddenberry told him, “If I have another show like that, we’ll be off the air and I won’t be able to make any statement.”
“As a gay person who’s closeted, I understood,” Takei said.
Ultimately, it was another actor who finally prompted Takei to come out. In 2005, as governor of California and having campaigned as a friend to the LGBTQ+ community, Arnold Schwarzenegger received a marriage equality bill passed by the state legislature. “When push came to shove, he vetoed it,” Takei said. “That’s when I came out, and I came out roaring.”
Twenty years later, Takei—known today as a successful actor, activist, social media personality, author, and an out gay man—expressed at the end of his talk the affinity, rather than the difference, that’s inherent in a rhyme. “ALA is okay,” he declared, “and it rhymes with Takei.”
Updated: July 7, 2025 to correct Meg Lemke’s name
