Sir Patrick Stewart, OBE (born 13 July 1940) is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career on stage and screen. He is most widely known for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its successor films, as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film series, and for his prolific stage roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In 1993, TV Guide named him the best dramatic television actor of the 1980s,[1] and television's sexiest man in the previous year.[2][3]
Early life[edit]
Patrick Stewart[4] was born on 13 July 1940[5] in Mirfield,[6] in the West Riding of Yorkshire,England. He is the son of Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the British Army. He has two older brothers, Geoffrey (b. 1925) and Trevor (b. 1935).[7][8]
Stewart grew up in a poor household with domestic violence from his father, an experience which influenced his later political and ideological beliefs.[9] Stewart's father served with theKing's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and was Regimental Sergeant Major of the 2nd Battalion,Parachute Regiment during the Second World War, having previously worked as a general labourer and as a postman.[10] As a result of his wartime experience during the Dunkirk evacuation, his father suffered from what was then known as shell shock (post-traumatic stress disorder). In a 2008 interview, Stewart said, "My father was a very potent individual, a very powerful man who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode onto the parade ground, birds stopped singing. It was many, many years before I realized how my father inserted himself into my work. I've grown a moustache for Macbeth. My father didn't have one, but when I looked in the mirror just before I went on stage I saw my father's face staring straight back at me."[11]
I believed that no woman would ever be interested in me again. I prepared myself for the reality that a large part of my life was over.
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Patrick Stewart,
Regarding his becoming bald as a teenager[12]
Regarding his becoming bald as a teenager[12]
Stewart attended Crowlees Church of England Junior and Infants School.[13] He attributes his acting career to an English teacher named Cecil Dormand who "put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand [and] said, 'Now get up on your feet and perform'".[14]In 1951, aged 11, he entered Mirfield Secondary Modern School,[15] where he continued to study drama. At age 15, Stewart left school and increased his participation in local theatre. He acquired a job as a newspaper reporter and obituary writer at the Mirfield & District Reporter,[16] but after a year, his employer gave him an ultimatum to choose acting or journalism.[17] He quit the job. His brother tells the story that Stewart would attend rehearsals during work time and then invent the stories he reported. Stewart also trained as a boxer.[16] He lost his hair at the age of 18. The traumatic experience made Stewart timid, and he found that acting served as a means of self-expression.
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