Everybody loves it when Patrick Stewart shows up on screen.
But behind the camera, he's had his fair share of dark experiences, including being disrespected
by the creator of one of his biggest roles.
Patrick Stewart's trouble in life started early.
His father Alfred was a World War II veteran who was often violent toward his mother Gladys,
and Patrick would have to intervene to stop the violence when he was as young as 5.
These harrowing experiences would go on to affect his acting career in a massive way.
He was drawn to the theater because it provided refuge from his troubled home life, though
it also took him a long time to be able to truly cut loose onstage, as he tried to lock
so much of his pain away.
"I had a reason to be out of the house-"
"Yeah."
"In the evenings, which is when often problems would occur."
Stewart's early childhood trauma left its mark on his personal life as well.
As he explained to Express in 2009,
"Such experiences are destructive.
In my adult life, I have struggled to overcome the bad lessons of my father's behavior, this
corrosive example of male irresponsibility."
Stewart has ultimately managed to confront his past, as he's had therapy, and he's been
involved with the domestic violence charity organization Refuge since 2006.
It's basically impossible to picture Patrick Stewart with a full head of hair.
After all, by the time he began his star-making turn as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he was already
sporting his signature chrome dome.
And he's actually rocked the bald look much longer than you might assume, and much earlier
than he would've preferred.
As it turns out, Stewart was only 19 when his hair started to part ways with his scalp.
Alas, he didn't take the situation very well, and in a prolonged bout of insecurity, he
chose to fight this cruel twist of fate with an escalating series of hats, comb-overs,
and even the occasional hairpiece.
In an interview on the BBC show Parkinson, Stewart revealed that his friends finally
put a stop to these antics.
As he explained,
"There was a man who had been at drama school with me.
He was a good, loyal friend to me.
He was also a judo black belt.
Very strong, very powerful.
He and his wife invited me for lunch one day.
We had lunch, it was very nice, bottle of wine.
And the two of them got up after lunch, I thought they were going to make coffee or
something, and all of a sudden, I was grabbed from behind."
One forced haircut later, and Stewart had found his iconic look.
With his extensive theater experience and iconic film roles, it's hard to deny that
Patrick Stewart is a master thespian.
But despite his extensive resume, he's still known primarily for two roles: Star Trek's
Jean-Luc Picard and X-Men's Professor Charles Xavier.
These famous roles have certainly made him a superstar, but they've also somewhat clipped
his wings as an actor.
As he told The Independent in 2009,
"I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going
to move beyond a certain level of role.
And I was -– because I had graphic instances of it -– handicapped by the success of Star
Trek.
A director would say, 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' –- and this was compounded
by X-Men as well."
A return to the stage in 2003 finally made Stewart fully realize his frustration with
Hollywood typecasting, and he's been much more involved with theater ever since.
One of his most recent gigs on the stage happened in 2016, when the then-76-year-old teamed
up with his X-Men co-star Ian McKellen in a production of No Man's Land to rave reviews.
"Oh, quite well, yes, past my best now."
Patrick Stewart's looks and voice exude the kind of assured confidence that's easy to
associate with higher education.
But that just proves once again how great an actor he is, as he actually left school
behind at the tender age of 15, and he's reportedly somewhat insecure about his educational background,
or lack thereof.
As he admitted during a 2022 interview with The Guardian,
"[Ian McKellen] won a scholarship to go to Cambridge, and I left school at 15 and two
days.
I was at a secondary modern school, where a great English teacher first put Shakespeare
into my hands and asked me to read it aloud.
But I feel a sense of intimidation at Ian's level of education.
Although I now understand he spent most of his time at Cambridge acting rather than studying."
Of course, there are several different educational routes that one can take, and what Stewart
might lack in academic laurels, he's more than made up for over the course of his highly
respected acting career.
And he returned to academia eventually, as he became a scholarship student at Bristol
Old Vic theater school two years after dropping out.
He's also an honorary graduate of the University of Huddersfield, and he even served as the
school's Chancellor between 2004 and 2015.
Jean-Luc Picard is arguably the greatest Star Trek captain to ever command the Enterprise,
and he's so iconic that he's thus far the only one to receive a spin-off series bearing
his name.
Patrick Stewart has of course been integral in making Picard stand out in a franchise
full of memorable characters.
So you might be surprised to learn that the creator of Star Trek was staunchly against
Stewart's casting.
During an appearance at a Star Trek panel in Las Vegas in 2017, the actor revealed that
Gene Roddenberry disliked the idea of Stewart playing Picard.
As he revealed,
"Gene and I did not have a close relationship.
We had a respectful relationship.
Gene had very strongly felt that I was wrong for the role ... I am told, and I don't know
the details, but there was a lot of warfare that went on in the producers offices about
that."
Fortunately, Roddenberry eventually came around to see what Stewart brought to the role, with
the actor noting,
"I got the feeling that he was ultimately kind of satisfied with how it turned out."
In 2014, a bakery in Belfast, Northern Ireland became the subject of controversy when it
refused to bake a custom cake featuring Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, along with the
text "Support Gay Marriage."
The customer eventually took the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights,
where it was dismissed in 2022 due to technical issues that rendered it inadmissible.
In 2015, Patrick Stewart weighed in on the conversation, and his stance was somewhat
surprising.
He's been a vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, but as he admitted during an appearance on the BBC
show Newsnight, he actually thought that the bakery was correct in this case.
His comments drew some backlash, and he eventually took to Facebook to further explain his logic.
As he put it,
"In my view, this particular matter was not about discrimination, but rather personal
freedoms and what constitutes them, including the freedom to object [...] I know many disagree
with my sentiments, including the courts.
I respect and understand their position [...] What I cannot respect is that some have conflated
my position on this single matter to assume I'm anti-equality or that I share the personal
beliefs of the bakers.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth."
Patrick Stewart seems like a jovial fellow, and the same goes for talk show host James
Corden.
So logic would seem to dictate that they would get along famously.
But that wasn't always the case, as an incident at the 2010 Glamour Awards demonstrates.
As the two men started to present an award together, Stewart unexpectedly called Corden
out on what he perceived as a disrespectful and disinterested attitude.
The visibly flustered Corden responded with a quick apology and told Stewart to avoid
straying away from the subject while presenting.
Stewart countered by launching into multiple underhanded jokes about Corden's weight, which
Corden pointed out were painfully unfunny as he tried in vain to get things back on
track.
Things got so bad that the recipient of the award, Zoe Saldana, actually sided with Corden
in her speech, as the two men continued their embarrassing back-and-forth in the background.
Stewart later apologized for his actions and admitted that he was somewhat worse for wear
during the incident.
As he told Classic FM,
"My part of the evening came late and it was alcohol, I'm afraid.
I went too far, I was somewhat out of control.
I have nothing but admiration for Mr. Corden.
I still blush in remembrance of it."
Patrick Stewart has two children from his first marriage, but alas, the whole fatherhood
thing didn't exactly fit into his busy acting schedule.
A hard-working man since his youth, his theater engagements led to him being a fairly absent
dad, which he later came to regret.
As he admitted to the New York Daily News in 2015,
"When I got married and I had children, I missed huge amounts of [family] time.
I would see my kids on Sundays if I was lucky.
It was hard on my kids."
Despite Stewart's absence from his kids' lives, it seems that a love for performing still
runs deep in the family.
His son Daniel is an actor himself, and the father-son duo have even appeared in multiple
projects together.
Daniel fully recognizes the absurdity of his familial situation, and he's talked about
how growing up in the Stewart household was pretty different from what one might consider
a normal childhood.
As he put it to USA Today in 2015,
"My upbringing wasn't a typical one in that my mum and dad came home at 5 and dinner was
on the table at 6."
"Father?"
"I get the feeling from your mother that you have something to tell me."
Celebrity marriages don't exactly have a reputation for lasting as long as possible.
And like many other A-listers, Patrick Stewart has had his own share of divorces.
His first one reached a fairly respectable age before it eventually dissolved, as he
married choreographer Sheila Falconer in 1966, and they then divorced in 1990.
Stewart's two children, Daniel and Sophia, came from that union.
Stewart's second marriage resulted from his time on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as
the woman he married, Wendy Neuss, was a producer for the show.
Their marriage lasted for only three years, as they wed in 2000 and divorced in 2003.
Fortunately for Stewart, his third marriage to singer Sunny Ozell appears to be built
on a sturdier foundation.
The two met in 2008 at a restaurant where Ozell was waitressing, and they married five
years later.
And the two of them are still doing just fine.
As he revealed to People Magazine in 2022,
"I've never met anyone like her before.
She is so smart and so informed.
And her intellectual accomplishments are extraordinary.
She remembers everything."
"May not be a romantic comedy.
Might be more of a, you know, walking dead movie, actually.
As far as I am concerned."
Patrick Stewart might be a veteran professional actor of the highest order, but even he has
found the physically and emotionally demanding artform to be occasionally overwhelming.
In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, he admitted that he had a tough time during his
stint of performing the Shakespeare play Macbeth in 2007 and 2008.
He was in his late 60s at the time, and he devoted his life to nothing but Macbeth for
an entire year.
There was one particularly challenging time that led him to cope with the stress of the
performance in some pretty unhealthy ways.
As he recalled,
"I had difficult patches and there was a period when we were in New York that performing that
play took everything I had.
I would end the show emotionally exhausted, go straight home, and drink alcohol until
I passed out.
I'd sleep for a good many hours and then find that, by about four in the afternoon, there
were little stirrings of, 'You're going to play this great role again in a few hours.'
And I'd know it would end with me being f---ed in a few hours.
But it was the only way I could find to do it."
In hindsight, Stewart seems to believe that the experience was professionally a fairly
solid success, but not enough so to repeat those bleak moments.
As he made sure to note,
"I know now that I have to stop and take a break."
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