Q&A: William Shatner reflects on his long career and how curiosity continues to drive him

William Shatner is busy.

A documentary on his life, "You Can Call Me Bill," directed by Alexandre O. Philippe ("Lynch/Oz"), is scheduled to roll out in theaters March 22 to coincide with his 93rd birthday. He continues to host and narrate the puzzling-phenomena History series "The UnXplained With William Shatner." A 2022 performance at the Kennedy Center, backed by Ben Folds and the National Symphony Orchestra, is about to be released both as an album, "So Fragile, So Blue," and a concert film. The title song, says Shatner, "encompasses a lot of my thinking about how we're savaging the world, and (I'd hope) it'd be a song that people would listen to and perhaps be inspired to do something about global warming." And on April 8, for 15 minutes before the shadow of an eclipse falls over Bloomington, Ind., Shatner will address "55, 60,000 people" in the Indiana University football stadium. "So what do you say, what do you write, what do you do? I'm going to have to solve those problems."

Actor, author, recording artist, equestrian, pitchman, the range of his seven-decade career — from Broadway (he won a Theater World award for "" in 1958), to Hollywood, Shakespeare to He-Man — has made him more than an actor in the public mind and something of a brand, or perhaps a national monument. If his role as Capt. James T. Kirk on "" is the fixed point from which that career extends backward and forward in time, there are things to admire in Early, Middle and Late Period