Star Trek icon LeVar Burton, 69, spotted with cane months after major surgery


LeVar Burton is best known for his work in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reading Rainbow and the groundbreaking series Roots


levar burton red carpet© WireImage
Faye James
Faye JamesSenior Editor
2 minutes ago
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LeVar Burton stepped out with his wife of 34 years, Stephanie Cozard Burton, in the City of Love as they celebrated a romantic getaway together. The 69-year-old actor relied on his cane to walk the streets of Paris, after undergoing hip surgery four months prior.

LeVar looked stylish in a black tee, a checkered jacket and light-wash jeans, paired with sunglasses and a black pendant around his neck. Stephanie included several other photos in the social media carousel of the delicious food they indulged in on their trip, while celebrating their 34th wedding anniversary. 

"Fun in Paris with my boo," she captioned the sweet post. The couple first met in 1988 on the set of Roots: The Gift when he was the star and she worked as a makeup artist. They tied the knot in 1992 and welcomed their daughter, Mica, two years later. 

levar burton paris© Instagram
LeVar relied on a cane during his trip to Paris

"She's got a wicked sense of humor, also, very morbid. Stephanie is a goddess," LeVar previously told Serial Optimist of his wife. "Fiercely intelligent, stunning to look at. INTENSE in her energy. She's a goddess. I married a goddess."

LeVar is best known for playing Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and for hosting the PBS Kids show Reading Rainbow for 23 years. Mica followed in her dad's talented footsteps when she joined the cast of Star Trek: Picard in 2023. "Mica's grown up with them all," LeVar told People of his castmates. 

"My dad drove me to work, and it was just my family on-set, my Star Trek family," she added. The star is also a father to Eian, his son with his ex-partner, Chimara P. Smith. For the first years of Eian's life, LeVar had no idea of his existence, as Chimara had chosen to raise him as a single mom. The TV personality then filed for joint custody and became part of his son's life. 

levar burton anniversary dinner© Instagram
The couple celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary

LeVar has undergone a series of health issues, including a hip replacement in February. He previously shared that wearing the iconic VISOR in Star Trek left him with limited visibility and constant pain. 

"I bumped into everything the first season – light stands, overhead microphones, cables at my feet – I tripped over it all, I walked and sometimes ran into walls and pieces of set," he told the BBC.

levar burton Geordi La Forge on Star Trek© CBS via Getty Images
LeVar portrayed Geordi La Forge on Star Trek

"It was really, really hard. So it's a sort of conundrum – the blind man, who puts on the VISOR and sees much more than everyone else around him, when the actor actually does that, he's turned into a blind person." 

LeVar Burton speaks at the ceremony posthumously honoring Carl Weathers with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 29, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)© Getty Images
The role left him with headaches and injuries

"Then there was the pain," he continued. "In the second season we re-designed the VISOR and made it heavier, and the way we actually affixed it was that we screwed it, we literally screwed it into my head."

"So there were screws that we would turn, and there were flanges on the inside that would press into my temples, and so after fifteen or twenty minutes of that I got headaches. So I had a daily headache for about six years. Which was also no fun," he recalled. 

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