Kenny Alexander Mitchell, a Canadian actor best known for his work on “Star Trek: Discovery,” died on Saturday. He was 49 years old.
Sunday posts on the Star Trek website and his own Instagram page revealed that he had died.
The Instagram post said that Mr. Mitchell had been fighting ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) for more than five years.
In “Star Trek: Discovery,” Mr. Mitchell played Klingon characters Kol, Kol-Sha and Tenavik, as well as Aurellio, a character who used a hovercraft wheelchair. In an Instagram post, he described Aurellio’s creation as a “special collaboration with my Discovery family that injected me with heaps of Love & Inspiration during my tough battle with ALS.”
In 2019, Mr. Mitchell played Joseph Danvers, Carol Danvers’s (Captain Marvel) father in the movie “Captain Marvel.” He has also had parts in the TV shows “Nancy Drew” and “The Detectives.”
In a moving interview with People in 2020, Mr. Mitchell talked about being diagnosed with ALS and how he was having to use a wheelchair.
“The moment that they told us it was [ALS], it was like I was in my own movie,” he said, holding back tears. “That’s what it felt like, like I was watching that scene where someone is being told that they have a terminal illness. It was just a complete disbelief, a shock.”
The ALS affects the nerve cells that make the body’s muscles work. The disease stops these cells from working and kills them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This very rare brain disease is also called Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neuron disease. About 30,000 people in the United States are thought to have ALS, according to the
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Last August, Mr. Mitchell thanked his friends and family on Instagram for being there for him during the five years he had been living with ALS. “That is so beautiful.” This sickness is truly horrible… “Yet, even with all the pain, there is so much to be thankful for,” he wrote next to a picture of himself on the beach.
The day Mr. Mitchell was born, November 25, 1974, in Toronto! Susan May Pratt, his wife, their two children Lilah and Kallum, his parents Diane and David Mitchell, and a brother will miss him.
