LeVAR BURTON

LeVar Burton portrays Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge, who plays the blind but intelligent Chief Engineer. Officially a helmsman, LaForge rose through the ranks to become a Lieutenant-Commander and thus winning the role of the ever-vacant regular Chief-Engineer.

LeVar presently serves as host and series producer of "Reading Rainbow", the highly-acclaimed Emmy Award winning series on PBS, now in its eleventh year. A 1990 recipient of a star on Hollywood's Walk Of Fame, LeVar is also proud to be a member of the cast of "Captain Planet", an animated series that utilizes the environment as a message to the viewers.

After applying for and winning a scholarship to USC, LeVar began working toward a degree in drama and fine arts. During his sophomore year, he auditioned for his Emmy-winning role Kunte Kinte in the award-winning mini-series, "Roots".

Following "Roots", LeVar starred in a variety of television movies including the Emmy-nominated "Dummy", "One In A Million: The Ron LeFlore Story", "Grambling's White Tiger", "The Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones", "Battered", "Billy: Portrait of a Street Kid", "A Roots Christmas: Kunte Kinte's Gift" and the mini-series, "Liberty". Among his feature film credits are "Looking For Mr. Goodbar", "The Hunter", with Steve McQueen and "The Supernaturals".

As the president of Eagle National Films, LeVar is currently developing projects for film and television, some of which he will direct as well as produce. LeVar just completed his third "Star Trek" feature film.

Following in his friend's Jonathan Frakes's footsteps, LeVar began his directing career in the sixth-season episode of TNG, "Second Chances". LeVar continues to direct episodes of "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager", two "Star Trek" spinoff series currently in production.