Over 13 years since the ABC comedy series Benson ended, people around the world still remember veteran stage, film and television performer Rene Auberjonois as political aide Clayton Endicott III. For the past seven seasons, however, Auberjonois has concealed his familiar face behind make-up as Constable Odo, the shape-shifting long arm of the law on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

With the programme recently having finished its final season, the actor has shed his mask for good and re-emerged, he hopes, into a profession still burgeoning with possibilities and choices.

“If you do your job properly you usually learn a lot from any role you do. Of course, getting to play someone like Odo over a period of years has given me a greater understanding of the character,” notes Auberjonois. “For me, as I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I became aware of how on an instinctive level I made choices to cover myself.

"The mask of the character was already written into the show, but I actually lobbied for a denser and more complete mask than they initially considered. I also used very different vocal and physical qualities when playing Odo, so I really hid myself, Rene Auberjonois the person, within the character.

“In a lot of ways that was a professional decision in that I’d spent six years as Clayton Endicott III and was acutely aware after that finished how tied to the character I personally became. Clayton wasn’t me but because it looked and sounded like me people tended to really connect me with that character. "

In fact, to this day more people recognize me as Clayton Endicott III than as Constable Odo. So I think that that’s where hiding myself underneath the make-up has paid off in the sense that I will be able to leave Odo – someone I played for seven years – behind without being typecast."

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Feature © Visual Imagination Ltd 1999. Not for reproduction.