Who Played Miri On Star Trek & Where Is She Now?
If there's one thing "Star Trek: The Original Series" loves, it's taking the Enterprise crew to planets full of disturbed children who are equal parts creepy and tragic. The infamous episode "And the Children Shall Lead" is a swing and a miss for many fans on this front (and often considered one of the worst "Star Trek" episodes ever), but the base concept was far more positively received with Season 1, Episode 8, "Miri," in which the team lands on a planet whose population contracts a fatal disease when they reach puberty, making the only inhabitants children. The most prominent of the group is Miri, an older girl who befriends Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew as they desperately search for a cure.
For this single episode, the youthful Miri was played by Kim Darby, an actor who went on to amass numerous credits across film and TV. In the ensuing years, she appeared on shows like "Bonanza," "Murder, She Wrote," and "The X-Files" while also starring in movies like "True Grit" and "Better Off Dead..." Darby remained active as an actor through the late 2010s, but what exactly is she doing now?
Kim Darby is seemingly retired (but still active)
Kim Darby celebrated her 76th birthday in 2023, by which point it had been at least a few years since any of her fans had seen her on-screen in a new project. The actor's latest credit is from 2017, when she starred in the horror flick "The Evil Within" as Mildy Torres. With no further roles in the years since and no upcoming projects, it appears as though Darby has retired from acting. Furthermore, it seems that she has long since capped off her time as an acting instructor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught for 17 years. However, all of this doesn't mean she's completely inactive in the industry.
Darby has continued to participate in interviews recapping her storied career and most notable roles into the 2020s. In 2021, she recorded a series of interviews with Justin Bozung covering her films "The Strawberry Statement," "The Grissom Gang," "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," and "The One and Only," and in November 2023, she participated in a Q&A in which she fielded various queries on her starring role in "True Grit." All told, it seems Darby is more than happy to continue speaking publicly about her experience in the industry, even if she's no longer actively appearing in new projects.