George Takei

George Hosato Takei (born April 20, 1937, Los Angeles, California) is a Japanese American actor, activist, and author best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek. During World War II, his family was forcibly incarcerated in Japanese American internment camps — first at Rohwer, Arkansas, then at Tule Lake, California — an experience that has defined much of his life's advocacy work.

Takei came out as gay in 2005 and married his partner Brad Altman in 2008. He has been a leading voice in LGBTQ rights, Japanese American civil rights, and social justice advocacy for decades.

In comics, he co-created They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf Productions, 2019), an autobiographical graphic memoir about his childhood in the internment camps, co-written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by Harmony Becker. The book became a New York Times bestseller and won the Will Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. He received a 2026 Eisner nomination for Best Graphic Memoir for It Rhymes with Takei.