"What's wrong, Captain Picard?"
"What's wrong? I'm a serious,
Shakespearian actor, and I'm talking to the ambassador of the FUCKING WORM PEOPLE!"
Sir Patrick Stewart, OBE, is a British actor best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in
Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor X in the
X-Men movies (the only casting choice fans could ever agree upon for as long as there have been talks of bringing the mutants to the big screen).
And he doesn't need hair to impress everyone. It certainly wasn't necessary for TV Guide who called him "The Sexiest Man on TV" one year. (In an interview, he said that he wore a hairpiece until some friends held him down, stole it and shaved his head, then he admitted it looked better.)
Stewart was born
in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, studying drama at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school before moving on to the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had lost most of his hair by the age of 19, and impressed during his audition for the Old Vic by performing both with and without a wig and proclaiming himself to be "two actors for the price of one".
While at the RSC, Stewart had small parts in several movies (including
Dune and
Excalibur), before being cast as a relative unknown in
Star Trek.
Stewart has always laughed off those who suggest that, as a classically-trained actor, he was "slumming it" in things like
Star Trek - he suggested that in fact, all the kings and emperors that he had played with the RSC were merely preparation for the iconic role of captaining the new Starship
Enterprise.
Similarly, Stewart has always tried to remain in touch with his theatrical roots - spending a season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in his native Leeds, he had little time for critics who suggested that this was all the work he could find - he was doing it because
he wanted to do it. His various theatre roles include playing
Othello among an otherwise entirely black cast. Amusingly, at first he was one of the few TNG castmembers who took their job fully seriously and didn't mess around on-set, until he loosened up and, according co-star
Le Var Burton, would mess around and wreak havoc with the best of them.
Stewart has been most recently seen as Claudius (and King Hamlet) opposite
David Tennant in
Hamlet as well as becoming a regular special guest star on Seth MacFarlane's
American Dad, as the amoral, James Bond-esque CIA Director Avery Bullock.
Was
knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours List for services to drama. He still contributes to his local community, having being the chancellor of the nearby University of Huddersfield and president of the local football (soccer) academy since his return to the UK in 2004.
Provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: As a child he witnessed his father's regular abuse of his mother.
- Acting for Two: More like Acting for Fifty. He put on a one-man stage production of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, in which he played every character.
- Bald of Awesome: As mentioned above.
- A reporter questioned his casting in Star Trek, saying "By the 24th century, wouldn't they have cured baldness?" Roddenberry's response: "In the 24th century, they wouldn't care."
- Classically Trained Extra: Inverted: Once a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he said it was good practice for playing Picard, and has never tried to distance himself from the role. He's still a highly respected Shakespearian actor, though he reportedly refuses to say any of Picard's trademark lines during his other roles - though there are exceptions:
- Occasionally on American Dad, but then that's one of the jokes of his character in that show.
- His appearance as himself in Extras, in keeping with the persona he played.
- This brief appearance with The Count on Sesame Street.
- He also likes to avoid typecasting by intentionally taking humorous and silly roles to contrast with his normally serious and stoic screen persona.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander- Apparently he is quite eccentric in real life
- Cool Old Guy: Definitely one of the coolest around.
- And he will treat individual fans that make a special effort to see him in theatre him like kings. Truly a class act.
- Estrogen Brigade Bait: Was voted sexiest man on TV, greatly surprising him, but only him.
- Facepalm: The patron saint of facepalms - for a long time, facepalming reaction images on the internet were more likely to be Picard than anyone else.
- Grandpa What Massive Hotness You Have: Go on, deny it. I dare you. So much so, Even the Guys Want Him.
- Hey, It's That Voice!: His voice is instantly recognisable anywhere you go. Just for fun, read this entire article with his voice. Go ahead. You know you want to.
- Ink Suit Actor: Stewart does this in American Dad. The character he plays, Bullock, is designed to resemble Stewart. This is particularly noticeable in Family Guy gags involving Patrick Stewart, in which they use the exact same character model as they do for Bullock.
- A weird, partial example in X-Men: Evolution. While he didn't do the voice acting for that show, the creators designed Professor X to look like Stewart, having been inspired by his performance in the X-Men films.
- Large Ham: When he's having fun, Stewart can carve off slices of pork with the best of them.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: The only man who can pull off a French Captain with Yorkshire inflections... and its all the more awesome for it.
- Older than They Look: He doesn't seem to have aged at all in twenty-five years and could easily pass for ten to fifteen years younger (He's 71 as of this posting). This is perhaps a reward for his early career when he looked quite a bit older than He was ( He was forty-seven when he started playing Picard and looked in his mid fifties).
- Old Friend: Of BRIAN BLESSED! no less.
- One-Scene Wonder: The scene in Extras when he pitches a script that is essentially "Charles Xavier as a pervert" steals the entire series.
- One Of US: He is a classically trained Shakespearean actor who is also a big fan of Beavis & Butthead and Transmetropolitan.
- Patrick Stewart Speech: The Trope Namer, with good reason too. Who wouldn't want to listen to him?
- Prematurely Bald: As mentioned above, which made him more recognisable and more awesome.
- Shakespearian Actors
- Shout Out: In the afore mentioned brief appearance on Sesame Street, he uses his classic order of "Make it so, Number One." to get the literal number 1 to get back in line.
- During his appearance on Extras, Gervais asks him to give his script to someone he knows, and he says he will "make it so" (and then seems baffled that the man has never seen Star Trek: The Next Generation).
- Sophisticated as Hell: He's a Shakespearean actor who admittedly loves cartoons. In one David Letterman interview he said the two things he'd miss most if he went back to England would be valet parking and... Beavis And Butthead.
- The West Country: He learned his art at the Bristol Old Vic theatre.
- Type Casting: Surprisingly averted. He is just as likely to be recognised for his work in Sci-Fi and Comedy as he is for his dramatic roles.
- What Could Have Been: He's a big fan of Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan (he even wrote an introduction for volume 5) and at one point was being considered for the role of Spider Jerusalem in a movie adaptation.
- Also, his personal interference prevented Star Trek: First Contact from being a Time Travel farce about Captain Picard impersonating the injured inventor of the warp drive.
- He also auditioned as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation which is Hilarious in Hindsight as Brent Spiner eventually wanted out of playing Data because he didn't think he could pull off an ageless android. Compare that train of thought to things like The Nostalgia Chick's remark above.
- He was up for the role of Jafar in Disney's Aladdin, but couldn't fit it into his schedule (since he was filming TNG at the time). He considers not voicing Jafar one of his biggest career regrets.
- He was a candidate for Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin.
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