Actors thrive on their looks and yet Patrick Stewart who went bald by 19 reached the top of his profession. Stewart who passed away at 86 recently, turned to acting when he was in school.
Raised in poverty in Yorkshire England, the initial years were a period of rough going for him. But it could not prevent him from being “a singular talent, a generous collaborator and a true gentleman” going by a tribute from Marvel Studios
His father returned from World War II an alcoholic who suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome and physically abused Stewart’s mother. Stewart recalls pushing his body between his parents to protect his mother.
A school teacher introduced him to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at school. He was 12.
And acting became “safe space”. He started losing his hair when he was 17
Two years later it was a bald teenager who looked back at him from the mirror and embarassed him. But he got over it.
He became an actor at 18. Stewart started gaining acclaim in the 1960s as a member of Royal Shakespeare Company. But his rapid rise was to start nearly three decades later.
It was not a film but the television series Star Trek-the Next Generation in which Stewart gained mainstream recognition. It ran from 1987 to 1994
as a sequel to 1960s Star Trek.
He is remembered for the character Picard be enacted on the small screen. “Make it so” this character often said, instructing a subordinate to carry out a command. It also mouthed a similar catch phrase “Engage”.
It was a role he was asked to refuse and remain in theatre. But he took it and became a fan favourite.
He was an indispensable part of the lucrative sci-fi franchise. He played the erudite Captain Picard not only in 176 episodes over seven seasons of that series but on films too.
Star Trek hit the big screen and in it there was agaIn Stewart as Picard. He was 79 when he again appeared in the streaming series Star Trek: Picard.
As the seven seasons of TNG The Next Generation went by, the distinction between Jean Luc Picard and Patrick Stewart became thinner and thinner until it became impossible for me to say where he left off and I began, he once said.
He was a huge success in the role of the mutant wheelchair-bound Professor X in the X-.Men movies. It was based on popular Marvel comics character.
At first he balked at it. “And yet again I was proved wrong” he later said.
Come December, Stewart will be on the big screen as part of Avengers: Doomsday. It is a Marvel Studio film.
Stewart rose to dizzying heights. But he never lost his head.
In 2010, he was knighted by the queen at the
Buckingham palace. His predecessors to receive this honour were Alec Guiness, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.
“In that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me” he told reporters. One can trust Patrick Stewart for coming up with a memorable line even when he did not have a script.
