Actor: James Doohan

James Doohan landed at Juno Beach on D-Day with the Royal Canadian Artillery, was shot six times by friendly fire that night, and lost the middle finger of his right hand, which he concealed for decades on screen.

He invented Scotty’s accent himself during the audition, having tried several nationalities and concluded that engineers sounded Scottish.

The character generated a genuine surge in engineering enrolment, and Doohan received substantial correspondence about it. He appeared in seven films and hundreds of conventions.