Robert Beltran will take on a new type of role for a biopic coming next year.
Robert Beltran is well known for portraying Commander Chakotay in seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager. The actor has already reprised his role in Star Trek: Prodigy and will be returning for the upcoming episodes. But, next year, the 68-year-old actor will take on the role of the man who starred in one of the greatest films ever made—Citizen Kane.
According to wellesnet.com, Beltran will portray Orson Welles in the upcoming Eartha Kitt biopic, Eartha Kitt C’est Si Bon, and while Beltran isn’t on the list of actors TVOverMind thinks should play Welles, the director of the biopic, Shadow Dragu-Mihai, said he has the “rare personal strength and powerful aura that was Orson Welles.” The director went on to say that he’d worked with Beltran in the past and that it’s an honor that he’d agreed to join the cast.
Robert Beltran started his career in the theater at the California Shakespeare Festival.
The actor, who earned a degree in theater arts from California State University, continued to work in the theater after the role of Chakotay ended, and it’s that training that will, most likely, hold him in good stead when he portrays Orson Welles, an actor who also began his career in the theater.
Welles and Kitt were close friends, with Kitt’s daughter saying her mother was “like a sponge around him because she was so drawn to his intensity and his incredible knowledge of many different subjects. People often thought they were lovers, but she said they never were. It was more of a mentorship.”
The biopic is set to release in May 2023, but whether it will be in theaters or straight to streaming is yet to be announced.