Remembering Sir Patrick Stewart
“Patrick Stewart was a new sort of actor. I was working in the Aldwych Box Office in 1968 and saw him again and again in John Barton’s famous Troilus and Cressida, in which he played Hector. This was long before actors started visiting the gym, but Pat was toned, buff, ready to pounce like a lion. His voice, too, eschewing the mellifluousness of the RSC’s verse-speaking of the time, cut through like a knife. He was working his way up to the great roles which he later played with such triumph, still with the RSC.
In between these two phases of his career, he’d gone to Hollywood and in the guise of Jean-Luc Picard had become an international superstar. There was nothing indulgent about his Picard: he was fierce, commanding, penetrating.
When he and I finally worked together in Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket it was exhilarating to connect to that tautness and intellectual fierceness, mingled with fear and despair and bafflement. Patrick’s life, especially his young life, had not been easy, not at all, and he had to fight for his self-confidence. This he brought to his Vladimir. But he also brought it to his relationship with his fellow-actors, especially those who were young and struggling with the job and themselves; he gave very generously of his time and his money to help guide them.
Despite his deep seriousness, he also had great Northern wit. He had had a huge success in New York in a one-man Christmas Carol. A journalist was interviewing him later in London, and mentioned that I was about to do the same thing. Pat narrowed his eyes: “By whose permission?” he said. Funny, brilliant, fierce, generous. That was Pat.”
By Simon Callow CBE, Actors’ Trust Trustee
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