That contradiction sat at the center of everything people couldn’t make sense of after August 9, 1999. Nerine Kidd — the girl who spent every summer of her childhood water-skiing on a New Hampshire lake, who was described by people who knew her as an experienced, almost fearless swimmer — was found face-down at the bottom of a Studio City swimming pool at forty years old. Her family didn’t buy it. One relative, speaking to the press, couldn’t hide the confusion: “I mean, Nerine grew up in a lake. She water-skied. It’s just odd that she would die in a pool.”
But addiction doesn’t care what you’re good at. That was the brutal lesson her story left behind.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Nerine Elizabeth Kidd |
| Born | July 13, 1959, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | August 9, 1999, Studio City, California |
| Age at Death | 40 |
| Parents | Warren Kidd Sr. (longshoreman), June Kidd (former secretary) |
| Siblings | Howard, Warren Jr., Robert (d. 1995) |
| Career | Model and actress |
| Known For | Marriage to William Shatner; Umetni raj (1990), A Twist in the Tale (1999) |
| Married | William Shatner, November 15, 1997 – August 9, 1999 |
| Burial | Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles |
| Cause of Death | Accidental drowning associated with neck trauma; BAC 0.27–0.28%, Valium detected |
Where She Came From
The Kidd family lived in Roslindale, a working-class neighborhood tucked into the southern end of Boston. Her father Warren hauled cargo as a longshoreman. Her mother June had been a secretary. They weren’t wealthy, but they were solid — a family whose idea of summer vacation was packing the kids into the Chevy Impala and driving north to a cottage beside a lake in Sandown, New Hampshire.
Nerine was the second of five children, the kind of daughter who naturally took charge. Her younger brother Warren would later fight back tears describing her: “Family was her source. Nerine always took care of us. She was the one who held us together. That was Nerine’s way.” That’s not a woman who fades into the background. She was, from childhood, someone people orbited.
She was also, even then, striking. Bold, almost fearless, the kind of person who lights up a room without trying. The lake was where she sharpened that fearlessness — boating, water-skiing, walking for hours along the shore. She didn’t treat the water with caution. She treated it like a friend.
The Turning Point: One Agent, One Sentence
A Boston modeling agent named Janet Chute spotted her first. Chute’s assessment was blunt and accurate: “She was unusual looking, raw and unrefined.” She had something — the bone structure, the height, the way she occupied space — but there was one obstacle standing between Nerine Kidd and a national career. Her accent. Pure Roslindale Boston, thick enough to stop a room.
Chute told her plainly: drop it or stay local.
Nerine dropped it. Within a year of finishing high school, she packed a bag and took the bus to New York City. No contacts, no safety net — just the conviction that she had what the industry wanted and the willingness to work until she proved it. That wasn’t bravado. That was the same girl who’d stood on water skis at age six. She’d never seen the point in hesitating.
Career Rise: From New York Runways to the Yugoslav Desert
New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a city built for people with exactly Nerine’s combination of looks, nerve, and appetite for reinvention. She signed with agencies, worked runways, took catalog jobs, and refined the raw talent Chute had seen in Boston. Then she went further — booking work across Europe, where she built her print portfolio and picked up experience that domestic-only models couldn’t match.
Back in the United States, she landed the kind of commercial that meant you’d actually made it: a national television spot for Brut cologne. It ran everywhere. She was also a runner-up in the Miss World contest, a credential that few sources have verified independently — though multiple outlets cite it. She was represented by J. Michael Bloom and later by L.A. Talent, both legitimate agencies with industry standing.
By 1985, she moved to Los Angeles. The acting pivot was deliberate. She wanted more than catalog pages and cologne ads, and Hollywood was where that ambition had to be tested. Her verified screen credits are modest — the 1990 Yugoslav drama Umetni raj and a 1999 episode of the New Zealand children’s anthology A Twist in the Tale — but the career was still building momentum when everything shifted direction.
Personal Life: The Man Twenty-Eight Years Older
She met William Shatner around 1994 or 1995, depending on which account you trust. Some sources say it happened on the set of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, where Shatner was directing. Others place the first meeting at a party in Los Angeles. Shatner’s own version: she “pummeled her way into my heart.” Whatever the exact circumstance, the attraction was mutual and immediate.
The age gap was hard to miss — Shatner was 28 years older, the same age as her own father. When Nerine asked Warren Sr. what he thought about marrying someone so famous, the old longshoreman gave the only answer a father can: “Jeez, I don’t know. It’s your life. If you love him, then go ahead. Do you love him?” She said yes.
The wedding happened on November 15, 1997, in Pasadena — a black-tie ceremony with Leonard Nimoy, Shatner’s closest friend and Star Trek co-star, standing as best man. Shatner opened his vows with a poem he’d written himself, pledging his love to “Nerine, my queen.” She pledged her sobriety. It was a beautiful ceremony. And then the morning came.
Controversies: The Disease That Outran the Love
Shatner wrote it plainly in his 2008 memoir: “I woke up about eight o’clock the next morning and Nerine was drunk.” She’d consumed several bottles of vodka overnight, hiding them around the house. It wasn’t the beginning of the problem — it was the continuation of one that had been documented before the wedding.
Leonard Nimoy had telephoned Shatner before the marriage. One sentence: “Bill, you do know that Nerine is an alcoholic.” Shatner told him he knew. “But I love her.” Nimoy paused, then said quietly: “Well, Bill, then you are in for a rough ride.” He wasn’t wrong.
She was twice arrested for driving under the influence. She entered a 30-day rehabilitation program three separate times — including a stint at the Betty Ford Center that began just before what would have been their first anniversary. Nimoy, who had his own history with alcohol, personally took Nerine to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Her psychiatrist eventually told Shatner that divorce might be the only action strong enough to force real change. Shatner filed in October 1998, then pulled back. The couple reconciled. They were trying to hold it together when August 1999 arrived.
Her family pushed back on the full picture. Friends said she drank, but wasn’t an alcoholic — then admitted she sometimes got “very drunk.” The internal contradiction in that statement tells its own story. What isn’t disputed: she wanted to be sober. She tried repeatedly. Alcoholism didn’t care about her effort.
The Night of August 9, 1999
Shatner had been away that day, visiting family in Orange County. He returned home to their Studio City house around 10 p.m. The house was quiet in a way that didn’t feel right. He found Nerine at the bottom of the deep end of their backyard pool. He dove in, pulled her out, started CPR. He would later write that when he tried to open her mouth, it was stiff. He already knew.
The LAPD declared the scene consistent with accidental drowning. There were no signs of foul play, no signs of struggle or forced entry. LAPD Detective Mike Coffee closed the case as an accident. The final autopsy, released in October 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, found a blood-alcohol level of 0.27 to 0.28 percent — more than three times the legal driving limit — plus traces of Valium in her system. Her body showed neck trauma and facial injuries consistent with diving headfirst and striking the pool bottom.
The official cause of death: accidental drowning associated with neck trauma.
Her family struggled with it publicly. She’d grown up in the water. She knew how to swim. But at that level of intoxication, those skills couldn’t have saved her. The night before she died, witnesses saw Nerine at a restaurant covertly ordering vodka while telling people it was cranberry juice. The disease was running the show by then, not her.
The Controversies That Wouldn’t Quiet Down
The tabloids didn’t wait for the autopsy. The National Enquirer had a story questioning Shatner’s involvement in Nerine’s death ready to publish — and agreed to donate $250,000 and kill the piece in the days following her death. What that arrangement says about how the story was being handled, readers can judge for themselves.
Shatner’s agent confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that his client had filed for divorce and been discussing ending the marriage in the days before she died. Some true-crime commentators have pointed to the neck fracture, the bruising, and her status as an experienced swimmer as reasons for doubt. Quora threads and podcasts have continued debating it for decades. A former modeling friend alleged in a podcast that Nerine had shared “shocking revelations” about her life in a final phone call.
The LAPD investigated and found no evidence of foul play. Shatner had a verified alibi. The toxicology was unambiguous. The official record is closed. The questions, however, have never fully stopped — partly because tabloid incentives kept them alive, and partly because the circumstances, viewed in isolation, feel impossible. They make more sense when you understand what 0.28 percent blood alcohol does to a person’s coordination and judgment, regardless of their swimming ability.
What She Left Behind
A private memorial service was held on August 14, 1999. Nerine was buried at the Church of the Hills at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills. The fan club website for Shatner ran a black-bordered banner at the top of the homepage: “In Memory of Nerine Kidd Shatner.”
Shatner established the Nerine Shatner Memorial Fund through Friendly House, a Los Angeles organization supporting women in recovery from alcoholism and drug dependency. He turned her death into something that could reach other people in the same fight she lost.
In 2004, he recorded a song called “What Have You Done” for his album Has Been — the album critics had dismissed before hearing it, and then couldn’t stop talking about. The track describes finding her body. It’s not metaphor. It’s the actual night, compressed into music.
More than twenty years after August 9, 1999, Shatner still spoke about her the same way. “Her death still haunts me. There are times I’ll see someone who resembles her, and I’ll think, ‘Oh my God, that looks like Nerine.’ And the nightmare of the event is still there. It’s always there.” He called her “the great love of my life” — a woman with one weakness “that killed her.”
Every year, Shatner and his subsequent wife Elizabeth Martin visited the pool where Nerine died.
Conclusion
The entertainment industry keeps producing the same cautionary tale — beauty, ambition, Hollywood, addiction, early death — and repeating it doesn’t make it less true or less devastating. Nerine Kidd’s story fits that template in its outline. But the details don’t fit the cliché.
She wasn’t passive. She went to rehab three times. She made promises at her own wedding about sobriety. She had people around her — Nimoy, Shatner, friends — who were genuinely trying to help. Addiction won anyway, the way it often does, not through any failure of love or effort, but because it’s a disease that takes a specific kind of time and support to treat, and sometimes even that isn’t enough.
Her brother Warren said she made everyone around her feel special. Her modeling agent said she was raw, unrefined, and completely original. Her husband said losing her nearly killed him. The fund she inspired helped women who were fighting the same war she lost.
She deserves to be remembered as more than an asterisk in a famous man’s biography. She was the girl in the Chevy Impala, racing toward a New Hampshire lake every summer. She was the twenty-year-old who landed in New York City with a Boston accent and a refusal to quit. She was, by every account, someone who made rooms warmer just by walking in.
Forty years wasn’t enough. But it was a life that mattered to the people who actually knew it.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who was Nerine Kidd?
Nerine Elizabeth Kidd was an American model and actress, born July 13, 1959, in Boston, Massachusetts. She is best known as the third wife of Star Trek actor William Shatner, whom she married in November 1997. She died on August 9, 1999, at age 40.
2. How did Nerine Kidd die?
She drowned in the backyard swimming pool of her Studio City home. The official cause of death was “drowning associated with neck trauma.” Her autopsy found a blood-alcohol level of 0.27–0.28 percent and Valium in her system. The LAPD ruled it accidental.
3. Was William Shatner home when Nerine died?
No. Shatner had spent the day visiting family in Orange County and returned home around 10 p.m. He found her body, dove into the pool, attempted CPR, and called 911. He had a verified alibi and was never considered a suspect.
4. Did Nerine Kidd struggle with alcoholism?
Yes. She was twice arrested for driving under the influence and entered rehabilitation programs three times, including a stay at the Betty Ford Center. Leonard Nimoy personally accompanied her to AA meetings.
5. When and where did Nerine and William Shatner marry?
They married on November 15, 1997, in a black-tie ceremony in Pasadena, California. Leonard Nimoy served as best man.
6. Did Shatner know about her drinking before they married?
Yes. Nimoy called him before the wedding and told him directly that Nerine was an alcoholic. Shatner’s response: “I know she is, but I love her.”
7. Was there a memorial fund set up after her death?
Yes. Shatner established the Nerine Shatner Memorial Fund through Friendly House in Los Angeles, a non-profit supporting women recovering from alcoholism and drug dependency.
8. Did Shatner write or record anything about Nerine’s death?
Yes. His 2004 album Has Been includes the song “What Have You Done,” which directly describes the night he found her. He also wrote about her death in his 2008 memoir Up Till Now and again in his 2018 memoir Live Long and… What I Learned Along the Way.
9. What were Nerine Kidd’s acting credits?
Her verified screen credits are two: the 1990 Yugoslav drama Umetni raj (released internationally as Artificial Paradise) and a 1999 episode of the New Zealand children’s series A Twist in the Tale. She also appeared in a national television commercial for Brut cologne.
10. Was Shatner suspected of foul play?
The LAPD investigated fully and found no evidence of foul play. Some tabloids and online commentators have raised questions over the years, pointing to her neck trauma and swimming ability. The official record remains closed as an accidental drowning.
11. Did Shatner file for divorce before Nerine died?
Yes. His agent confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Shatner had filed for divorce in October 1998. The couple subsequently reconciled and were together when she died in August 1999.
12. Where is Nerine Kidd buried?
She was buried at the Church of the Hills at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles.
13. How old was Nerine Kidd compared to Shatner?
Shatner was 28 years older than Nerine — the same age as her own father, who admitted he never fully approved of the marriage.
14. What did Shatner say about her death years later?
He described his grief as overwhelming and said he had suicidal thoughts in the immediate aftermath. More than two decades later, he continued visiting the site where she died every year on the anniversary and called her “the great love of my life.”
15. Did Nerine Kidd have children?
No. Nerine had no children. She became a stepmother to Shatner’s three daughters from his first marriage — Leslie, Lisabeth, and Melanie — but she and Shatner had no children together.
