Patrick Stewart: Ian McKellen told me to turn down part of Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard
Sir Patrick Stewart, the Shakespearian actor perhaps most famous for playing Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard, opened up about his feelings towards his abusive father at the Southbank’s London Literature Festival.
The actor was emotional as he discussed the man, saying “I did love him, I respected him, he finished the war as a superstar… He has given me a great deal in my acting career: his strength, his self discipline, which was intense, and his dedication to the work that he was doing.”
Stewart has previously spoken about having to physically shield his mother when his father would become abusive, and the relationship has weighed heavily on the actor throughout his life.
It is one of many fascinating passages from his memoir, Making It So, that Stewart discussed at a packed Royal Festival Hall on Saturday. Another story he told was about his early rebellion from the education system.
“On the morning of the 11 Plus examination I had to walk half a mile to my school. I set off with a bag from my mother with some sandwiches. There was a junction on the way – 50 yards to the right was my school, and to the left the road went down a slope into the coal valley, across the river, across the canal, across the railway lines, and up to the hills into the beginning of the Pennines. I went left.”
He joked that this was the beginning of his lifelong sympathy with socialism, adding that the decision was pivotal for his career – it was at the secondary modern school that a teacher first introduced him to Shakespeare.
Elsewhere in the hour-long talk Stweart revealed that his best friend Ian McKellen had advised him to turn down the part of Jean-Luc Picard, the role that would take him from a respected stage actor to an international superstar.
Stewart is in remarkable shape for an 83-year-old, although he did joke after losing the thread of one of host Samira Ahmed’s questions that “Now you know the truth! I’m an ooooold man!”
He soon disproved the notion his mind is slowing down, however, with an impromptu recital of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, delivered with characteristic gravitas.
Stewart was among a star-studded line up for the Southbank’s London Literature Festival, with other acts including Jada Pinkett Smith, Simon Pegg, George the Poet and Ian Rankin.
- Some tickets are still available – for more information go to southbankcentre.co.uk. Patrick Stewart’s Making It So: A Memoir is out now