Today in Star Trek history: Star Trek: Picard's Patrick Stewart is born
Patrick Stewart, the "engaging" actor who plays Picard in STAR TREK: PICARD
Click to enlarge
JUNE 13, 2022 - Of course, Sir Patrick Stewart is best known for his role of Jean-Luc Picard, the man in the center seat of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek Picard. But there’s a lot more to his life and career than that, and today we celebrate his 82nd birthday.
Stewart was born in 1940 in Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to a textile worker named Gladys and her husband Alfred. Alfred had been a regimental sergeant major in the British army during World War II and suffered from combat fatigue, what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Partly due to this, the Stewart household was not a happy one, with domestic violence visited upon Gladys.
“I experienced firsthand violence against my mother,” Stewart said in a 2006 video for Amnesty International, “from an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions, nor his hands.” Stewart talked about the events as a harmful and open secret that everyone in his town knew about, but nobody did anything to stop. He went on to talk about the lasting psychological impact of the violence, saying, “As a child witnessing these events, one cannot help feeling somehow responsible for the pain and the screaming and the misery. And it is deeply confusing.”
Stewart supports Combat Stress, a UK organisation aimed at providing mental health services for veterans and is an advocate for pit bulls, having fostered a number of them throughout his life.
Stewart is a trained Shakespearian actor, and in 1966, he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his Broadway debut in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1971 and won a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the West End’s Antony and Cleopatra in 1979.
Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) wearing a wig NOT for his audition, but for the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION episode "Violations"
By the time the opportunity to audition for Star Trek: The Next Generation rolled around, Stewart had already appeared on both the big and small screens in films and shows like Coronation Street, I, Claudius, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and Excalibur. He didn’t actually care for science fiction and even once questioned Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward about why she would work on such a property.
It was when he was performing in a reading at UCLA that Bob Justman, Supervising Producer of the original Star Trek, saw him and knew he’d be perfect as the lead in a new version of Trek that was being produced. Once he’d been convinced to audition, Gene Roddenberry needed to be convinced to cast him.
As the story goes, Roddenberry was completely against having a bald captain, so asked that Stewart wear a wig for his audition. Stewart called England, had a very good wig made and sent over to Los Angeles, and put it on right before going into the audition room. The actor got the job; the wig did not.
Stewart spent the first year of the series living out of a suitcase, convinced that the show would get canceled at any moment. It must have been quite a shock, then, when it was the role he became known for, with seven seasons, four movies and now, the spinoff series based on his character, Star Trek: Picard, just having completed its second of three seasons! By 2011 he had changed his tune, however, when he said in a 2011 interview that Star Trek: The Next Generation was the biggest highlight of his career because “After that series was such a huge success, which it was immediately, everything was changed for me.”
Patrick Stewart played Professor X in the X-MEN films
The next most famous role Stewart is known for must be Professor Charles Xavier in seven films of the X-Men series. He recently reprised the role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Other roles have included Captain Ahab in 1998’s excellent made-for-TV film adaptation of Moby Dick, Ebenezer Scrooge in a 1999 TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol, following on the heels of his one-man show based on the same material, a wonderfully funny gay character on an episode of Frasier, Professor Ian Hood in Eleventh Hour, Captain Nemo in a TV adaptation of Mysterious Island, and as himself in the “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car segment of an episode of Top Gear. To say he’s had a prolific and varied career is an understatement.
Sir Patrick Stewart attends a photocall for 'The Silverstone Classic' celebrity race in aid of the Bobby Moore Fund for Cancer Research and Crohns Foundation at Silverstone Circuit on June 20, 2012 in Northampton, England. The race will be held on Ju
In fairness, the “Star…Car” appearance didn’t come from nowhere, Stewart is an avid fan of car racing and, in 2012, he finished ninth in the Silverstone Classic Celebrity Challenge race.
For more on Patrick Stewart’s life and career (and there’s plenty more,) head on over to Wikipedia. In the meantime, please join the staff at DSTN in wishing Sir Patrick the happiest of birthdays.
T is the Managing Editor for Daily Star Trek News and a contributing writer for Sherlock Holmes Magazine and a Shakespeare nerd. He may have been the last professional Stage Manager to work with Leonard Nimoy, has worked Off-Broadway and regionally, and is the union Stage Manager for Legacy Theatre, where he is currently working with Julie Andrews. after which he’ll be working on Richard III at Elm Shakespeare Company.
