Anton Yelchin ✝

Anton Viktorovich Yelchin[a] (11 March 1989 – 19 June 2016) was an American actor. He played Pavel Chekov in three Star Trek films: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and the posthumously released Star Trek Beyond (2016).\n', ' Born to a Russian Jewish family in Leningrad, Yelchin and his family moved to the United States during his infancy. In the late 1990s, Yelchin began appearing in television and film roles. His role in Steven Spielberg\'s miniseries Taken helped further his career. Yelchin also starred in Huff and the posthumously released Trollhunters.\n', ' Yelchin was born 11 March 1989, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). His parents, Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, were pair figure skaters, who were celebrities and stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet for fifteen years. His family is Jewish; in the USSR, they were subjected to religious and political oppression. Yelchin had said: "my grandparents suffered in ways I can\'t even begin to understand under Stalin." Nationally, Yelchin\'s parents were the third-ranked pair team; they thus qualified for the 1972 Winter Olympics, but were not permitted to participate by the Soviet authorities. Yelchin had said the reason was unclear: "I don\'t exactly know what that was – because they were Jewish or because the KGB didn\'t want them to travel."\n', '