Iconic Star Trek and Batman Actress Dies at 90
Hollywood has lost Leslie Parrish, a familiar face whose career stretched across film, television, political activism, and environmental conservation. Parrish died in Washington state in 2025 at the age of 90. Her stepdaughter Erica Berdan later confirmed the death, bringing renewed attention to a life that extended far beyond the memorable roles audiences saw on screen.
She was born Marjorie Hellen on March 18, 1935, in Melrose, Massachusetts. After her parents divorced when she was seven, she moved with her mother to Upper Black Eddy, a small Pennsylvania community tucked among the mountains of Bucks County. Parrish later recalled an isolated childhood without television and with radio signals blocked by the surrounding terrain.
Her first ambition was music rather than acting. She dreamed of becoming a concert pianist and worked as a waitress to pay for study at the Philadelphia Conservatory. When her money ran out, formal training became impossible to continue, but she kept playing and gave lessons to young students. The discipline required by music would remain part of the way she approached later work.
Friends and customers encouraged her to try modeling. She traveled to New York City, found work quickly, and attracted the attention of a Twentieth Century Fox scout. The studio signed her, changed her professional name to Leslie Parrish, and sent her to Hollywood. In 1955 alone, she appeared in several films, including A Man Called Peter and Daddy Long Legs.
Parrish soon became the kind of performer viewers recognized even when they could not immediately recall her name. Her television credits included Perry Mason, Bat Masterson, The Man From UNCLE, Star Trek, and Batman. On the Adam West Batman series, she appeared in three episodes and played different characters, including Glacia Glaze, an associate of Mr Freeze.
Star Trek fans remember her from the episode The Apple, where she played Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas aboard the USS Enterprise. Her combination of elegance and intelligence suited the polished world of 1960s television, and her guest appearances continued to draw interest decades later from viewers rediscovering classic series.
Her most celebrated film performance came in The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. Parrish played Jocelyn Jordan, the fiancee of Laurence Harvey’s Raymond Shaw, in John Frankenheimer’s tense political thriller. She also appeared in Lil Abner, Sex and the Single Girl, Three on a Couch, and The Giant Spider Invasion.
Success in Hollywood did not contain her interests. Parrish became increasingly involved in opposition to the Vietnam War and founded Speakers and Talent Organized for Peace. She campaigned for Tom Bradley, who became Los Angeles’s first Black mayor, and after his victory she was appointed to his Blue Ribbon Commission.
Her final acting credit came in the 1978 television movie No Margin for Error. She then devoted more time to conservation. With her second husband, author Richard Bach, she helped establish the Spring Hill Wildlife Sanctuary on Orcas Island in Washington. Through conservation agreements, 168 acres of forest and wildlife habitat were protected.
Parrish described that environmental work as the achievement of which she was most proud. The statement says much about the person behind the screen image. Acting made her visible, but preservation gave her a way to protect something that would outlast any single performance.
The news of her death closes a chapter connected to television’s golden age, but it also invites a fuller understanding of her life. Leslie Parrish was a pianist in training, a model, an actress, an antiwar organizer, a political participant, and a conservationist. The glamorous portraits remain, as do the films and episodes, yet the land she helped protect may be her most enduring role.