FEBRUARY 16, 2022 - Lately, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine actor Colm Meaney has been staying busy with multiple film and television projects. While promoting his latest film Confession, Meaney spoke to The Big Issue, weighing in on the trajectory of his acting career and throwing his support behind TNG costar Michael Dorn’s idea for a Star Trek series focusing on Worf.

The idea of “Star Trek: Worf” is nothing new. Dorn has been sitting on the idea for the past decade. He even wrote a pilot episode for the series. Having read the script, fellow Star Trek actor Marina Sirtis said she was “very impressed with [her] best friend”, noting his attention to detail. While there hasn’t been any progress on producing a Worf series, the idea still gets tossed around in conversation from time to time. When asked, Meaney told The Big Issue “Oh, absolutely I’d go for that [...] I love Michael.”

Meaney may be living on the island of Majorca these days, but his acting career has taken him from his native Ireland all the way to Hollywood - and back. “I never wanted to do anything else,” Meaney said. “From the time I was 13 or 14 I knew what I wanted to do. There weren’t many pathways to this career in Ireland in the late Sixties. But I was fortunate I got into the Irish National Theatre [Society], the Abbey School of Acting.”

Meaney eventually moved to New York, then to Los Angeles. For him, it wasn’t about seeking fame or being the “next Bruce Willis”. It was simply about being an actor. “When I was a kid,” Meaney recalled, “being a working actor was the most extraordinary achievement I could dream of. So the idea of being a star wasn’t really there.” Meaney credits his mentor the late Pat Laffan for telling him “Don’t ever worry about being a star, just be a working actor.”

And work, he has. According to IMDb, Meaney has racked up 139 credits on screen, with 225 episodes playing Miles O’Brien on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

To learn more about Colm Meaney’s career, and his motivation as an actor, check out the full interview at bigissue.com.