The Incredible Voyage of a Yorkshire Lad

Our latest cover star is the iconic, beloved actor Sir Patrick Stewart; a man who needs little introduction given his six-plus decade long exceptional body of work in film, theatre, and television.

When we first interviewed Sir Patrick in December 2021, he’d just begun the formidable task of penning his memoir. Making It So is now available for preorder, ahead of its release on October 3, and is a revealing portrait of a boy who rose from humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to scale the heady heights of Hollywood, and tread the boards with the best of them.

Proud to have been present at the beginning of this particular chapter of Patrick’s extraordinary journey, we spoke with the Star Trek and Royal Shakespeare Company legend again this week to learn about his process of writing the book. We hope you enjoy our catch-up, and then delve into our original interview below to really learn about the genesis of this inspiring man — his background, dreams, challenges, and truth.

When we last interviewed you, you were working on your memoir. How does it feel to have completed it and have it now going out into the world ?

In all honesty, it feels quite surreal. I’ve never written a book before, and as it was on the whole such a solitary process, that it’s now about to be “out in the world” feels hard to believe. It’s quite the leap, from the privacy of my office to suddenly on book shelves.

What did your writing process look like and did it feel cathartic in any way?

I began writing at the start of the pandemic, as I obviously had no other work available. I didn’t know if I actually had it in me to write a book, so I started rather gently…I  was open to whatever came, and I found that continuing in that manner let the words just flow.

What is the most important lesson you’d like others to draw from your experiences?

I don’t have an easy response to this question, as I myself am still in the process of figuring it out. I am still searching, still seeking, still sifting through my 83 years and wondering (with delight) “…how the hell did I get here?” But I suppose if there’s one aspect of my life that could act as any kind of “lesson” for others is a phrase I picked up along the way that has served me well: The harder I worked, the luckier I became.

Were there any memories unearthed that you’d forgotten about?

Not exactly, but what was curious about returning to memories of my early life was how transported I would be. I’d look up from my computer in Los Angeles, and forget that I wasn’t in Yorkshire. I’d come downstairs to break for lunch, and my wife would frequently tell me that I’d slipped back into my childhood West Riding accent. And I find that fascinating… that unearthing memories can blur the lines of the past and the present.

We know you have a massive book tour coming up — what’s the plan after that?

Well, this current first book tour is indeed a lengthy one. But I’m told that my memoir will likely be translated into multiple languages across the globe (which is both thrilling and unbelievable to me) and I would very much like to support these future releases. So who knows? Maybe Sunny and I will be visiting Croatia, or Germany, or Japan in the not so distant future. It’s a wonderful feeling, this sense that the future still lies unwritten.

The following original interview with Sir Patrick was published in December 2021

With a resume almost as long as William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, Sir Patrick Stewart has blazed a trail in television, film, theater, and much more.

The British actor is possibly best known for playing legendary Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the subsequent movie franchise, and as Professor Charles Xavier, founder and mentor of the superhero team in the X-Men film series.

He has also taken on the roles of some, if not most, of Shakespeare’s greatest characters during his long tenure with the Royal Shakespeare Company. And his voice, possessing an inimitable authority, is among the most recognizable on the planet.

He’s a consummate professional, a man who, despite decades at the top of his game, remains disciplined and dedicated, maintaining a deep reverence and respect for his chosen craft, and an appreciation for the life and adventures it has taken him on.

Born into the humblest of beginnings in Mirfield, a small town in West Yorkshire, UK, one could be excused for equating his life journey to that of the lad who has boldly gone where few have gone before.

Grounded in working class politics and principles, in fairness and leading by example, Stewart has remained true to his roots throughout a lifetime which has found him working and forging friendships with some of the cinema and theater world’s most formidable talents.

And as a witness to domestic violence within his own home growing up, he became a patron of ‘Refuge’, a UK charity for the victims of abuse. Also, following a deeper study and understanding into the effects of PTSD suffered by his regimental sergeant major father, he supports the British Armed Forces charity ‘Combat Stress’. He’s an atheist, a self-expressed feminist, and a patron of Humanist UK.

Showing no signs of slowing down at 81, and despite his initial resistance in resuming the part, in 2020, having been inspired by the concepts put forth by the executive producers, Stewart returned to his leading role in CBS’s ‘Star Trek: Picard’.

For our latest ‘Who the F*** Are You?’ profile, Mr Feelgood sat down with Sir Patrick in his Los Angeles home and had a candid conversation about life, love, regret, and how his peers Ian McKellen and Ben Kingsley brought out the childish rascal in him, much to the chagrin of the other actors at the RSC during that time.

Who the f*** are you?

I’m a kid who lived on Camm Lane, in Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. And who didn’t have much of a home life. I had a brother who I adored, and a mother who I adored, and a father who frightened me. And I didn’t have an education, by choice. On the day I was to sit the 11-plus exam, I went walking in the hills. I’d been preparing for them, and on my walk to school that morning, there was a T-junction. And to the right, just a few hundred yards down, was my school, and to the left was a road that went down into the Calder Valley, crossed the Calder River, crossed the canal, crossed the mainline railroad lines, and up into the hills on the other side. And left is where I went.

So it was a decision. It was a choice to turn my back on something that is mostly considered to be critical for a young person beginning his life somewhere. A good education. Well, I didn’t have one. And I got into terrible trouble for not showing up for the exam. So I went to a secondary modern school, which was utterly non-academic, and I was very happy there. My house bordered the grammar school playing fields, so I got a feeling for what grammar school boys were like, and I didn’t care for them. But at my secondary modern school, we had every kind of boy ranging from gypsies whose parents lived in caravans on the outskirts and traveled around, sometimes they came to school and sometimes they didn’t, through to poor working class kids, through to kids who failed their exam. And I was very, very content. I felt utterly at home.

But I also felt as though I might make a contribution to the life in the school. I was given a chance when I was made a prefect, and then finally in my last year head boy at the school, which meant that I attended headmaster’s meetings with staff. I represented the children in the school. It was pretentious of me, as a 14, 15-year-old, to be so pleased with myself that I was sitting in a room of adults. So childhood never actually happened to me until really a few years ago.

I blame Ian McKellen for turning me into a child again. Actually, there have been a number of actors in my life who have probed the mischievous child in me. Ben Kingsley did it to a great degree, and we got into trouble at the Royal Shakespeare Company for doing that kind of thing on stage. There was once an official protest by all the other actors in the company, that they had to control what we were doing because it was disruptive. And my friendship with Ian has, in many respects, brought back the better aspects of my childhood. But I’m trying to learn to be a grown up. And in the last six months I’ve been choosing my serious Picard, as I play Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. I have seriously been trying to commit myself to how to be a leading actor, because I never ever thought of myself as such.

I talk too much. No, I do! You asked one question and I talked for an hour! I’ve got to try and keep my responses short.

How are you feeling right now?

I’m feeling optimistic and grateful that my wife and I have, it would seem, come through the worst of the pandemic relatively unscarred. This house has been our refuge and we love it here, in the very center of Los Angeles. I’m struggling with aspects of old age. But I live with them. It’s okay. I never projected myself into being 81 and here I am. So wow. Why not enjoy it?

Where did you grow up and what was it like?

I grew up in the West Riding of Yorkshire. I only left it once when I went to the Festival of Britain in London in 1951, because I sang in my church choir, Mirfield Parish Church. Entirely because of our brilliant choir master, Mr Allot, we were in the top ten or dozen church and cathedral choirs in England. So we were invited to sing at the Festival of Britain. We went to London and we lived in a hostel in Croydon for three nights. But we had some time off, and we did evensong, and we did a special daytime service in the church which stands at the south end of Waterloo Bridge. As you come over Waterloo Bridge and you start to go round it, there’s a columned building on the left, which is the church where we sang. I always think of that every time I go around the island at Waterloo Bridge.

[My childhood} was bliss for the first five years. Because there was just my mother, who gave birth to me in July of 1940. I’ve often mentioned this because I did the sums and worked it out, I think I was conceived the night that my father went to war in October, 1939. That’s when he left with the British Expeditionary Force to invade France. So from 1941 to 1945 he was not in my life, but my mother was fabulous. She was a simple, sweet, generous, kind woman who looked after my brother and myself.

And then my father came home and everything changed. It was not all bad. I learned a great deal from my father, although it took me years to acknowledge it. But I did. Discipline, doing the job and doing it right. “If the job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” was one of the things he used to say. So as I’ve got older I’ve come to understand that there were many things in him that I’ve benefited from, and undoubtedly inherited. Some of them not pleasant. But I think I can keep them under control and they’re very valuable for the work that I do. Being an actor, you’re called upon to feel and experience and perform all kinds of acts, things you would never do in ordinary life. And he certainly had an impact on that.

What excites you?

When Huddersfield FC are winning a game away from home.

What scares you?

Not waking up, I think more than anything. I’m very lucky in the life that I’m leading at the moment, which is my life until I don’t wake up. And I am trying to live it as fully as possible, both in my work and my social connections and my marriage to a beautiful singer/songwriter, Sunny Ozell. The time started to go so fast. And I try to slow it down.

What is your proudest achievement?

To feel the respect of my colleagues, I think. It gives me intense satisfaction because I work with and have relationships with some very brilliant people. And Ian McKellen says that I have an obsession with my lack of education. Compared to the fact that he went to Cambridge and I went to a secondary modern school, which I left at 15, then I was out in the world… Excuse me, Ian is probably right. I do have a hang up about that. But I listen to NPR, I read the newspapers obsessively, and I try to fill my head with important stuff.

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

My first divorce. I shall never recover from how I felt doing that. The pain that it gave me, the sense of failure, the damage I did. It’ll never go away. But I’m an actor and no experience is wasted on actors, as it isn’t on writers and painters and composers. It’s all creative. We have this saying that my teacher at drama school, Duncan Ross, calls sense memory. And he talked about it a lot, that we can store away experiences.

So the other day, I had eight injections into the knuckles of my hands. The first one was very uncomfortable, but I thought I could make it through the other eight. And the second one was the most appalling pain that I’d ever experienced. I screamed for the first time in my life. So badly that people came into the room and said, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” And every single one of the seven remaining ones were agony. But round about the third, I was able to say to myself, “Sense memory, Patrick. Come on. Sense memory. Maybe you’re going to have to experience exquisite pain at some point. This is it. You’ve got it. All you’ve got to do is go back there.”

Who was your greatest mentor and what did they teach you?

I have three. First it was the great Cecil Dormand who was my English teacher who first put a copy of Shakespeare into my hand and made me read it out loud. I had no idea what I was saying. The first words of Shakespeare I ever said were, “I have informed your grace of what I purpose.” What? I’ve informed your grace of what I purpose? And then, at the same time, I met a woman called Ruth Wynn Owen. She was a retired actress who had worked with Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Peggy, for many, many years. She was her understudy, but she watched Dame Peg act, and Dame Peg was a wonderful woman. Ruth was a great influence on me. She talked to me about discipline and she taught me about being serious about the work and not self-conscious.

And then there was Duncan Ross who was the principal of my drama school at the Bristol Old Vic, who gave me the intellectual aspect of acting, which I still use to this day. At that time, when I was working with him, he had us write everything down. He said that there would come a time when you won’t have to write this down because you will remember it and it’ll always be there. And it is now. I put my spade into Duncan Ross continually and pull him out, and there he is and I know what I have to do.

Who are your fictional and real-life heroes?

I’m a great Raymond Chandler fan. And his hero, Philip Marlowe. I’d like to be him.

And in real life? I met him only once, by accident, and he grew into being my hero for a number of years. His name was Trevor Huddleston. He was Father Trevor Huddleston. Mirfield was famous for having an international cyclist called Brian Robinson and an Anglican monastery called The House of Resurrection. They were a kind of Anglican Jesuit organization. Trevor Huddleston had been sent as the priest by the House of Resurrection to other parts of the world to do their work. And Trevor went to South Africa. Trevor, why am I calling him Trevor? I would never have called him Trevor. He would’ve been Father Huddleston. But he, almost at once, threw himself into fighting against the whole world of racism, prejudice and murder and anger in South Africa. And he led campaigns against the government. Anti-apartheid.

My first year out of school I worked for the local newspaper. Strings were pulled. I shouldn’t have been there. They took grammar school boys. They gave me an area to cover, which was my own town, Mirfield. I was in charge of that unless something important happened, then they’d bring in a bloody ace senior reporter and I’d be pushed out back into the back. I had a bicycle and a notebook and I rode around and got to know quite a few people.

Every Wednesday, I would make a community call with the Father Prior at the House of Resurrection who I’d gotten to know and who entertained me with his love of show business and the West End Theatre. One particular time, having just left him, I went to pick up my bike which was leaning against the front entrance and I saw, striding across this big lawn, this tall giant of a man in a black soutane and a black overcoat down to his ankles. No hat, and it was wet as well. It was Trevor Huddleston who should have been in South Africa. I knew he was supposed to be in South Africa because he’d been really stirring things up. So I dropped my bike and I ran over and I called out, “Father Huddleston, Father Huddleston.” And he stopped, turned around and he frowned at me. And I said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt you. I’m surprised to see you back here. Can you tell me why you are back in England?” And he gave me a long, hard stare and said, “It was time for me to return.” And I said, “Ah, yes, but the work that you’ve been doing?” So it developed into an interview. It was the only interview of any quality that I ever gave. I went back to the newspaper offices and went to the reporter’s room and the sub-editor of the paper was sat at the end looking out of a window. All the reporters were spread out. I went in and I remember he said to me straight away, “Where have you been?” And I said, “Oh, something came up.” “All right. Well, get on with it.” So I sat down and I wrote up my interview and I went over and I said, “This happened by chance today” and I put it in front of him. And I watched the back of his neck. His whole demeanor changed.

This was national news. This was world news. Trevor Huddleston was no longer in South Africa. And he said, “Did you know this man?” And I said, “No, I just saw him and approached him.” And he said, “Bloody hell. Right. I’m calling the Yorkshire Post.” We altered the daily paper and he gave them the interview. And then it appeared in the national papers. My name was never attached to it. I did suggest, “Do you think it might be possible to put a by-line to this one?” “Who the hell do you think you are,” he said. “No way. No. You’re 15 years old.”

So Father Huddleston was kind of a real-life hero, oh my God, yes. And grew as a hero the more I understood about apartheid. He didn’t have to do it, and many weren’t but he campaigned and it enraged the followers of apartheid. He stood up and he said, “Not me.”

What is the favorite item of clothing in your wardrobe?

I’ve got an ETRO sweater that I love. People tell me it looks cool. I’ve had it for years. But it feels so good when I wear it.

What music did you love aged 13, and do you still love it now?

Well, rock and roll. But most especially Skiffle. Have you ever heard of Skiffle? You’ve heard of Lonnie Donegan? Well, he was the king of Skiffle. That was what they called that kind of music.

When I joined the newspaper, there was a young man, two years older than me, who had been to grammar school, Barry Parkin. And Barry Parkin loved music. We didn’t have music in our house. We had a radio, which my father controlled, and we had news and occasionally plays or talks and so forth, but no music. So I didn’t have music in my life. But Barry brought popular music to me. And every Saturday night we went to Dewsbury Town Hall because there was a dance. I started going there when I was 14, but I always looked older so they let me in.

I still play that music today. Oh yes, I do. But then I grew into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Then music dropped out of my life. I became so caught up in my work that music became irrelevant. Until 12 years ago when I met Sunny. And I have been reintroduced, not only to music, but to musicians who are such wonderful people, without exception. The people that I meet, just friends of Sunny, they play when she sings and we see them in bands and so forth. And it’s extraordinary. One of the nicest things that happened to me was a couple of years ago when a man said to me, “Oh Lord, I wish my father was still alive because he would’ve loved to have met you. He talked about you so much.” And I said, “Who was your father?” “Oh, his name was Lonnie. Lonnie Donegan. He loved what you did on television. And he watched the early days of Star Trek.” And it was borderline one of the proudest moments in my life because I saw him perform. I went to his concerts. Music is back in my life.

What is the most inspiring book you’ve ever read?

I’m afraid, obviously, it’s got to be the complete works of Shakespeare. I still read it. It’s on that shelf. I just open it up and read bits of it. Or I try to remember something that I played once that I learned. No book like it in the world.

When I first started saying it out loud, I had no idea what I was saying. The vocabulary was not remotely my vocabulary. And yet it became part of my vocabulary. I have passages of Shakespeare that I learned 60 years ago and remember vividly still. I can tap into them like that and up they come. Whereas I can’t remember the name of our milkman.

What is a movie that left a lasting impression on you?

‘On the Waterfront’. I saw it when I was 13 at the Essoldo cinema in Dewsbury on a Monday night. I’d heard of Marlon Brando because I used to read a cinema magazine. I’d not heard of Rod Steiger, I’d not heard of Karl Malden, I’d not heard of the wonderful actress who played the other leading part, Eva Marie Saint.

And when I arrived outside the cinema, they had the stills from the film framed as posters, but they were in black and white, which meant that the film was, which was annoying because I was going through a stage during which I had fallen in love with technicolor. But when I saw the film, I knew that it had to be in black and white.

At the time I worshiped Tab Hunter. I worshiped Debbie Reynolds. I adored Doris Day. But they didn’t play people like me. They lived in nice houses like the ones around here, where we are right now. So when I went to see On The Waterfront, I saw real people – this was a film about people I knew.

Now, I’d never met a dock worker in my life. I’d never met a mafia boss in my life. I’d never been in dockland, but the kind of life they were living was very much the kind of life I was living. The conditions of our domestic life and our family life. My mother was working in a weaving factory and she worked all her life. She was earning basically nothing for the job she did, and she worked eight or ten hours a day. I only went once and I couldn’t wait to get out of this ear shattering, dust ridden, horrible place where she worked for decades. There were bosses who owned mills in my neighborhood, I knew were bad guys. I’m not saying there were mafiosa, they weren’t. But I knew what their lives were like, even though they were totally different people.

I went back to the cinema twice more that week. I took my mother to see it, and poor woman, she really didn’t know what was going on at all. Although she said that she enjoyed it. Then on the Saturday night I took a pal with me and he didn’t really know much about it either, but that film had a huge impact on me. That scene with Steiger and Brando in the back of the car and he pulls the gun and he says, ‘Take the job…’

I met Eva Marie Saint the night that I accepted the job on Star Trek at a dinner party. And on another occasion, I met Karl Malden too. I insisted that the hostess at this dinner party changed the names around so that I could sit next to him. And the very first time I ever appeared in front of a camera was in a scene with Rod Steiger, in the back of a car. [In ‘Hennessy’ in 1975]

I met all these people, and it was extraordinary.

What is your favorite word or saying?

Well, very Yorkshire sayings really appeal to me. “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.” Where there’s dirt, there’s money. There, I translated it for you. My wife used this one this morning, “You can always tell a Yorkshireman, but you can’t tell him much.” But the one that I really love is, “‘Ear all, see all, say nowt; Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt; And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt, do it fer thissen.” Can you understand that?

What do you want people to say at your funeral?

I’d like to be thought of as funny. I’d like to be thought of that I could make people laugh.

It probably surprises people to hear that. If I can make the set laugh, it will make me smile for the rest of the day. So yeah, that will do.

And finally, a quickfire five favorites…

Car?

A car I still own. I bought it here in 1989, and now it’s in Oxfordshire. A Jaguar XK12. The monster, the 12 cylinder car. It’s a convertible. It’s British racing green. I bought it when it had about 1800 miles on the clock, and I’ve still got it. It is left hand drive so I’m driving on the wrong side of road in England, but on the little village streets and the lanes where we live, it’s invaluable because I know when I’m right at the edge of the ditch on the left, if something’s coming towards me, so it’s very helpful.

And I’d like an E-Type.

Sports team?

Huddersfield Town Football Club. I am actually president of the academy, of the club.

I haven’t done anything in that capacity, but I do have that capacity. So I can sit in the director’s box.

Meal?

I like Yorkshire pudding, but it’s not my favorite. You know what? I love what we call in England the Ploughman’s Lunch, where they serve you three or four types of cheese with biscuits, bread and Branston Pickle. And a glass of Guinness.

Grooming product?

My grooming product that I most enjoy and appreciate is Mr Peter de Oliveira, who has done my makeup for many years.

Clothing label?

There is so much wonderful men’s stuff out there. Right now. I have to say, John Varvatos and Brunello Cucinelli, I like them very much.

There’s something about John Varvatos. I don’t know him. Also, if I did get to know him, I could persuade him to start designing for women. Sunny loves his clothes, but there’s very little that she can wear as he’s just a men’s designer.

Making It So is available here

Grooming by Peter de Oliveira