George Takei: ‘Getting cast as Lt Sulu in Star Trek was life-changing’

The actor and activist on being locked up aged five, his passion for performance and coming out because of Arnold Schwarzenegger

My father was an Anglophile. He was a San Franciscan, but he loved all things English. He adored all the kings and queens and I'm named after the stuttering King George VI.

Getting cast as Lt Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek was life changing. The show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, told me the idea was a metaphor for the fact that the earth's strength lay in its diversity; people from all over the world, working out their problems and being a team - and boldly going where no one had gone before.