LeVar Burton

LeVar Burton is an actor, born 1957.

Three careers, one voice. Roots came first, in 1977: Kunta Kinte, a role that would have defined almost anyone else's working life and which Burton took on at the very start of his. Ten years later he was Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation, from 1987 to 1994, followed by four feature films and eventually a return as Commodore Geordi La Forge in Picard. He directed too, including the television film Smart House.

The middle career is the one that produced the trophies. He hosted Reading Rainbow for twenty-three years, from 1983 to 2006, and collected twelve Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody as its host and executive producer. That is an award record most film actors never approach, earned on a children's book show, and it explains why for a very large group of Americans he is not primarily a Star Trek actor at all.

What links all of it is the instrument. Burton reads aloud better than almost anyone in American television: unhurried, warm, never condescending to the listener, which is a rarer skill in children's programming than it should be. He has a Grammy for narration and has spent decades doing voice work, from Kwame in Captain Planet and the Planeteers to narrating Explained. He played Martin Luther King Jr. in Ali, appeared as a heightened version of himself on The Big Bang Theory, and turns up in Roots again in 2016, this time in the remake, in a different part.

Where to start with LeVar Burton

Begin at Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a warning: the first two seasons are rough on everyone and Geordi is given very little to do. Stay in and the character becomes the ship's most quietly capable person, and Burton gets the best of it from the third season onward.

Star Trek: First Contact is the film that uses him properly. Star Trek: Picard is the sentimental late payoff and earns most of it. Outside the franchise, Roots is the serious viewing, a landmark of American television and a startling early performance. Ali gives him a brief, careful turn as Martin Luther King Jr. Reading Rainbow is the show that shaped a generation of readers and remains the best demonstration of what his voice does. The Big Bang Theory is where he plays himself, and he is a good sport about it.

Roots

He was nineteen, still at drama school and had never acted professionally when he was cast as Kunta Kinte, and something like half of the United States watched it. He returned to produce the 2016 remake.

Star Trek

Seven seasons and four films as Geordi La Forge, an engineer written with an unusual amount of warmth, and a late return in Picard three decades after the series ended.

The presenting and later work

Reading Rainbow ran twenty three years and won him twelve Daytime Emmys, and the later career has been largely narration, hosting and producing rather than acting. He has also campaigned for years against book banning, which follows directly from the Reading Rainbow decades.

Genres LeVar Burton works in

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