Patrick Stewart

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2005

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart had to wait a long time for fame. The Shakespearean actor was nearly 50 when he was offered the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Contrary to predictions, the programme was a huge hit, and Patrick Stewart's famously bald cranium was on posters, duvet covers and Star Trek memorabilia the world over. Patrick was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, a town with a passion for amateur dramatics. The youngest of three brothers, he grew up watching performances by the all-female drama company to which his mother belonged. After a disastrous stint as a reporter, Patrick went on to work in repertory theatre around Britain, and then to a successful career with the RSC, during which he won an Olivier Awardfor his portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. After seven series at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, he has returned to Britain and to his first love, the theatre. He is currently appearing in David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre in London's West End.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings by Benjamin Britten Book: A compendium of the world's best science fiction Luxury: His beloved billiard table and a shed to keep it in

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an actor. You may well have seen him in his most famous role as Captain Jean-Lug Picard in Star Trek The Next Generation.
0:37.0	His journey to the captaincy of the Starship Enterprise has been astronomical.
0:41.0	The son of a working-class family from the West Riding of Yorkshire, he signed up for the Bristol-Old Vick
0:46.0	School and from there pursued a successful theatrical career particularly as a member of the
0:51.0	Royal Shakespeare Company until Hollywood
0:53.3	beamed him up to command its astral explorer.
0:56.3	Seven years later he was rich and famous and able ultimately to return to
1:01.1	what he loves doing best, acting in the theatre.
1:04.1	In recent years he's won an Olivier Award for his one-man show A Christmas Carol, and he's currently
1:09.1	enjoying critical acclaim in the West End in David Mamet's play about actors a life in the theatre.
1:15.0	I'm looking for that which makes me happy, he says.
1:18.0	I have an acute sense of Times Winged Chariot and a lot of work has passed me by. He is Patrick Stewart. There's no
1:26.7	doubt it seems to me Patrick for you that the stage is where you're
1:29.7	happiest isn't it? I became an actor to work on the stage. Everything beyond the stage had happened
1:36.5	to me, it happened by accident. I never looked for it. All I expected was that I
1:41.8	would spend a life in the theatre.
1:44.0	But you've learned the other stuff on the hoof obviously.
1:47.0	Yes, you make it up as you go on.
1:49.0	Now, why is it that directness?
1:52.0	It is the absolutely unique experience of going in front of a live audience
	...

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