Rene Auberjonois
Rene Auberjonois, a native New Yorker, began his stage career at the
American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., under the tutelage of
renowned actor/director John Houseman. He went on to appear in regional
repertory theater and became a founding member of the American Conservatory
Theater in San Francisco.
In 1970, he appeared on Broadway opposite Katherine Hepburn in "Coco"
and was honored with a Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical.
In addition to his other Tony-nominated performances in Neil Simon's "The
Good Doctor" and Roger Miller's "Big River," Auberjonois
has appeared in such state productions as "Metamorphosis," "Richard
III," The Misanthrope," "Flea in Her Ear," "The
Miser" and "Petrified Forest." He has also appeared in seven
productions at Los Angeles' acclaimed Mark Taper Forum.
His movie roles include "M*A*S*H," "McCabe and MRs. Miller,"
"Pete 'n Tillie," the 1976 version of "King Kong" and
"The Eyes of Lara Mars."
In the early 1980s, Auberjonois became well-known to American television
audiences as Clayton, the snide, unsufferably egotistical state government
official in the television comedy "Benson."
After "Mermaid," Auberjonois went back to Broadway, but reprised
his "Mermaid" role as the crazed French chef Louis in an episode
of CBS' "Disney's Raw Toonage," opposite Sam Wright's Sebastian.
He also appeared as the hapless head of Wayne Industries' R&D division,
killed by the Riddler (Jim Carey) in 1994's "Batman Forever."
In 1993, Auberjonois took the role of Odo, the melancholy-ridden chief of
security for a Federation space station in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,"
where he can still be seen weekly. In a second-season episode of "Deep
Space Nine" called "Shadowplay," Auberjonois appears opposite
fellow "Mermaid" voice actor Kenneth Mars, who plays a village
elder in a town whose citizens are literally vanishing into thin air.
