Morn is played by Mark Allen Shepherd. He is a Lurian male and the only member of his species seen in Star Trek. According to Emmy Award-winning make-up designer Michael Westmore, on the first day of filming the series, the director chose Morn somewhat randomly from among several prosthetic characters.
Morn runs a shipping business, but he is more frequently seen sitting on Deep Space Nine at Quark's bar. Morn's name is a deliberate anagram of the name Norm, a character on the TV show Cheers whom Morn resembles both physically and for his regularity at the bar.
Ironically, although Westmore went to great lengths to ensure that Morn could talk in case the character ever got a line, he never spoke on camera (though he did laugh); this became a running joke, with other characters commenting several times how extremely talkative he is. Morn is credited with knowing the funniest joke in the Universe, and in several episodes, an incidental character is seen to start laughing as he/she/it leaves his side. Quark sometimes breaks down laughing when he tries to retell the joke, and always gives up by saying that no one can tell it like Morn can. Despite this, Morn rarely seems to get Quark's jokes, and when he does, it takes him a while.
Often, other characters will refer to something Morn has done that, to the viewer, would seem very uncharacteristic for Morn, considering his usual on-camera silence. For example, when it became clear war with the Dominion was inevitable, Morn is said to have thrown a chair at Quark, then run naked across the promenade, screaming "We're all doomed!" Following that he supposedly rushed into a Bajoran temple, and threw himself at the feet of a priestess, begging for forgiveness. Vic Fontaine, the holographic singer who is a recurring character in seasons 6 and 7, has stated that Morn's rendition of "New York, New York" has to be seen to be believed. Lieutenant Commander Worf additionally claimed that Morn was a formidable sparring partner and the pair fought in the holosuites on a weekly basis.
Very little is revealed about Morn or his species on the show. In The Way of the Warrior, it was implied Lurians are usually found near the Hyundite Nebula; a hostile Klingon suggested it was suspicious to find Morn so far from there. It was revealed in the episode Who Mourns for Morn? that he had been previously involved in some criminal activities, notably the Mother's Day Heist in which his crew stole 1,000 bricks of gold-pressed latinum. Like all Lurians, Morn has two stomachs; it was revealed that he was storing the latinum taken from the bricks (in its natural liquid form) in one of them, and it was implied that is the reason his hair had fallen out.
Morn also appeared on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Birthright, Part I and made a cameo on the Star Trek: Voyager episode Caretaker.
In the episode Who Mourns for Morn?, Quark pleaded that Morn's chair should never be empty: he then sits a patron down and exhorts him to "keep it warm...for Morn". This patron is Mark Allen Shepherd without his make-up on.
Also, the painting of Morn seen in this episode was actually painted by Mark Allen Shepherd.
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