Leonard Nimoy’s son, Adam Nimoy, was stunned when the “Star Trek” actor wrote him a six-page letter that “read like a narrative of a failed and wasted life.”
It was 2008, and Adam had been sober for four years by then. The relationship between father and son was “at an all-time low.”
“I was going to Alcoholics Anonymous and learning how to deal with my father,” Adam told Fox News Digital. “He had a lot of anger. And I had a lot of trouble with him. . . . I was distant from him. I had no interest in arguing with him, which was impossible. Leonard was very formidable, very difficult, very powerful. . . . It was very hard to express my feelings.”
Adam Nimoy had a complicated relationship with his father, “Star Trek” icon Leonard Nimoy. (courtesy of Adam Nimoy)
The TV director has written a new memoir, “Most Human: Reconciliation with my father, Leonard Nimoy.” It describes her complicated relationship with the late patriarch and how they made peace before his death in 2015, at the age of 83.
The 67-year-old admitted that the letter left him devastated at first. At the time, he would call his father on special occasions, but they did not spend time together or call each other regularly.
Adam Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy can be seen enjoying surfing in Waikiki, Hawaii, circa 1970. (Jody Cortes/Getty Images)
“In that letter he expressed a lot of disappointment and anger with my attitude toward him, and toward himself,” Adam said. “I was very sad to receive the letter. But he wanted clarity. Who was to blame for the failure of our relationship? He wanted to get to the bottom of it. And he felt a lot of it was on me and my failures as a son. . . . And unfortunately, everything he wrote in his letter was true.”
Adam Nimoy’s memoir, “The Most Human,” is now available in bookstores. (Chicago Review Press)
At first, Adam was intent on distancing himself from his father even further. But a recovering friend of his encouraged him to reconcile with the actor.
“(He) said I should go and apologize to him for all my shortcomings or whatever he felt was wrong,” Adam said. “And I did.”
The path to peace was not easy.
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Here a young Leonard Nimoy can be seen in a 1964 episode of “The Outer Limits.” (ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
Growing up, Adam described his father as “very driven and very eager to succeed.” And as Nimoy’s fame soared, they were rarely seen together in public, as they were surrounded by crowds of strangers.
Adam Nimoy has admitted that a long letter from his father, Leonard Nimoy, left him devastated. (Courtesy of F. Scott Schaeffer/Adam Nimoy)
“My father was not comfortable being alone with me,” Adam said. “And a lot of it was because he always had something on his mind. . . . I had trouble socializing with my father. We didn’t go out much. And he was always a very overworked person. It was hard for him to just sit down and relax and watch TV. . . . We couldn’t communicate easily. . . . And when we tried to spend father and son time, we couldn’t do it in public. It would immediately become disruptive, and we would have to abandon plans.”
Adam admitted that as a child he struggled to share his father with the world. It took him years to fall in love with fans who made Nimoy a TV icon.
Leonard Nimoy meets fans in California. (Getty Images)
“You just want to be alone with your family,” he said. “And my dad was always very patient, always willing to give you autographs. . . . That was challenging for me.”
Adam explained that Nimoy came from a generation where emotions weren’t discussed as much as they are today. He wondered how that affected their relationship.
Leonard Nimoy in his home photo office/studio on March 2, 2002 in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California. (Paul Harris/Getty Images)
“Even when ‘Star Trek’ became such a huge success, his parents never expressed their feelings to him,” Adam said. “I never heard them say that they were proud of him, that they loved him, or really acknowledged his accomplishments. I knew they enjoyed the success. . . . They were very happy that there was so much attention around my father, that he was doing so well. The fans also showered their love and affection on my grandparents, and they loved it. They would even share fan letters with us, and they would almost be embarrassed by it. But I never heard them say a word of affection for my father. And I know they loved my father.”
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Although Leonard Nimoy (left) went on to have a notable career as an actor, director, writer and photographer after “Star Trek” from 1966-69, he was always Spock in people’s minds. (Jose Galvez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“. . . I wanted to break that cycle,” Adam said. “With my kids, I was very showy, very involved. I’m a different person than my father. . . . I expressed feelings of love, pride and joy when I was with them. . . . But for my father, that cycle was very difficult to break. . . . My grandparents were Russian immigrants who came to America and were shocked when they got here. It was all about survival. That’s what it was for Leonard.”
“Leonard was completely focused on surviving,” Adam said.
Leonard Nimoy (left) with William Shatner in a scene from “Star Trek.” (CBS/Getty Images)
Nimoy struggled with alcohol addiction during his lifetime. BBC It was previously reported that the stress of working on “Star Trek” led him to drink. Adam wrote that the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he attended was in the mid-90s when Nimoy was “newly sober.” Adam struggled with his own addictions, including alcohol and marijuana.
Adam Nimoy struggled with his father’s fame as a child. (Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
“It was weird,” Adam told Fox News Digital about going to AA with Nimoy. “It was like, ‘Is this our new father-son relationship? Are you trying to tell me something? Do you want me to join the program, or do you want to show me the work you’re doing in the program?’ It wasn’t clear to me. . . . I never knew what he was thinking. . . . It was really hard to tell what his motivation was. But I went along with him.”
“I thought it was all fine and interesting, except when I found out what the 12 steps of recovery were,” Adam continued. “That made me angry. One of the steps is to make a list of people you’ve harmed and be prepared to apologize to those people. And my father never apologized to me. . . . It made me very angry that he was skipping those steps. I was disenchanted with the program. It was a very negative experience, even though I hadn’t expressed those feelings to him.”
In the book, Adam wrote that Nimoy “had to skip stages in which he had to apologize for all the things he’d done, for all the arguments, for all the times we’d bumped heads when Johnny Walker was in the room.”
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Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in “Star Trek.” (CBS via Getty Images)
In December 2003, a friend told Adam it was his turn. In 2004, Adam returned to the show on his own.
“I was very sad and I was smoking marijuana all day long,” Adam said. “I was in an unhappy marriageAnd my kids were old enough that they started to think there was something wrong with me. I had changed. I was behaving differently – strangely… I was very disturbed by being drunk all the time. I just wasn’t enjoying it, and it wasn’t helping me. This had been going on for 30 years since I was in high school. I was ready – totally ready. And I never got back to being drunk.”
Adam said that when he received his father’s letter, the actor “wasn’t drinking anymore” but “he wasn’t going to meetings either.”
Leonard Nimoy arrives at the premiere of Paramount Pictures’ “Star Trek Into Darkness” at the Dolby Theatre on May 14, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Fraser Harrison/Getty Images)
“I think she struggled a lot with her feelings and what the right step was for her – I think she just didn’t know,” Adam said. “But … I had people in recovery who gave me the guidelines I needed to follow to reconcile with her. And that’s what I did, although when I was told to reconcile with her, I resisted. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t think she was worth it. I thought she’d been sober longer than me. So why should I make the first move? But that’s just normal, emotionally immature thinking.”
Adam said that the moment he made up his mind, his father “was willing to give up all his feelings for me.”
“He was ready to move on, too,” Adam said. “And that’s what we did — moved our relationship forward. And it was incredible. We were so happy to be together. We really loved each other. We just didn’t know how to love each other.”
William Shatner shares touching memory of Leonard Nimoy, explains why he’s doing ‘The Unexplained’
Adam Nimoy had already made peace with his father, Leonard Nimoy, before he passed away. (courtesy of Adam Nimoy)
Adam said that his Final years with Nimoy They were happy. They loved being with each other, and Nimoy bonded with his grandchildren. And yet, Adam would smile when fans would reach out to Nimoy.
“I was proud of him — really proud of him,” Adam said. “I was proud of what he accomplished in his life. . . . In those last years, it felt like we could finally trust each other.”
Today, Adam hopes his story will give hope to others who are struggling with similarly complicated relationships with their parents.
Here Adam Nimoy is seen posing for a portrait in tribute to his father, Leonard Nimoy. (Jody Cortes/Getty Images)
“I’m still a work in progress, but I’ve come a long way,” Adam said. “(And) family dysfunction is everywhere. You don’t have to have a famous father to have problems with a family member … but my father and I had to rediscover each other and rebuild our relationship. That’s the whole purpose of recovery.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
