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Before he commanded the USS Enterprise, Patrick Stewart covered the births, deaths, and church fete of a West Yorkshire mill town. Stewart left school at 15 and got a job as a junior reporter on the Dewsbury Reporter, covering the Mirfield district. He wrote news stories and obituaries, but he spent most of his spare time at the local theater. He had been performing since he was a child, thanks to an English teacher who put Shakespeare in his hands. After less than a year, he was told to pick between the paper and the stage.
He picked the stage, and he remembered the moment bluntly. “I went upstairs, packed my typewriter, and left,” he said (via Dewsbury Reporter).
How Patrick Stewart Landed the Captain Picard Role in Star Trek
The road to acting wasn’t glamorous or quick. Patrick worked for a year as a furniture salesman to save up for drama school. In 1957, he was accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He was reportedly the first person to get a West Riding Council grant who hadn’t studied at Oxford or Cambridge. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and stayed until 1982, appearing in more than 60 productions.
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Then he had a bit of luck in Los Angeles. Stewart had taken a job reading Shakespeare passages at a public lecture at UCLA. Robert Justman, a supervising producer on both Star Trek series, happened to be in the audience and liked what he heard.
Stewart, though, had no idea. His agent rang the next morning and asked why Gene Roddenberry wanted to meet him. Stewart replied, “Jean who? I don’t know her”, as per CBR. He later asked his children to explain the show to him, and they couldn’t stop talking about it.
The audition didn’t go well. Stewart said it lasted about six minutes, and he remembered Roddenberry’s verdict as “I don’t want a bald, middle-aged Englishman.” Roddenberry reportedly wanted a French actor. Justman and producer Rick Berman kept pushing for Stewart until Roddenberry gave in.
Stewart had doubts of his own. He nearly turned the part down because he didn’t want to be tied to years of work on one show. In the end, he said yes. The Next Generation ran for seven seasons between 1987 and 1994. It was a hit straight away and won 19 Emmys. His Picard was thoughtful and calm, a clear contrast to William Shatner’s more impulsive Kirk. His stage training shaped the way he played him. In his memoir, he wrote that he played Picard “as if he were a character in Henry IV.”
Patrick Stewart’s Legacy As Captain Picard & Beyond
Picard never really left him. Stewart played the role again in several films, then came back for the Picard series, which ran for three seasons between 2020 and 2023. Looking back on the part in 2011, he told the BBC that when he talked about Picard, he found he was “talking about myself.”
Stewart died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday. His representatives said he had a “brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. His last screen role will be Professor Charles Xavier in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Tributes poured in from the franchises he helped define. Jonathan Frakes, who played Commander Riker, kept it simple, saying, “Rest in peace, my friend.”
It’s a long way from the Mirfield & District Reporter to the captain’s chair. The man who made that trip never forgot where he started. Years later, he went back to his old school to help raise money for a new performing arts center.
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