Jeff Bezos’ lifelong fascination with Star Trek is well known. In fact, the centibillionaire doesn’t shy away from speaking at length about how the sci-fi franchise influenced his personal interests and aspects of his professional life. However, several years ago, the Amazon founder’s childhood fantasy came true when he played an alien Starfleet officer in the 2016 movie Star Trek Beyond. Calling it a bucket list dream, Bezos admitted that he had been begging Paramount, the company that owns the Star Trek franchise, for a role in one of the movies.
Although Bezos’ role in Star Trek Beyond was not central to the plot, the cameo lasted only eight seconds. The billionaire pleaded with director Justin Lin to have a speaking part and was even willing to be unrecognizable, ensuring his cameo wasn’t edited out.
Reportedly, Bezos spent a whole day at the studio for filming and even patiently waited for the crew to shoot the sequence. Let me remind you that Bezos was still actively running Amazon back in those days. In fact, the Seattle-based company was experiencing rapid growth during that period, making Bezos the fifth richest person on this planet. It goes without saying that he was a very busy man back then.
While some cast members couldn’t recognize Bezos during the shoot, everyone clearly noticed his presence on set. “I had no idea who he was. Not a clue. But he was obviously very important,” said Chris Pine, who stars in the film as Captain James T. Kirk. Apparently, the billionaire had arrived for the filming of his scene with nine bodyguards and three limousines. “He was awesome,” said Lin (via AP News). “It was like a president was visiting, you know? He had a big entourage! But it didn’t matter because he was so into it. He had to wait around all day because it was one day we were shooting like three different scenes and, it was also credit to Jeff because … he just nailed it every time.”
