Patrick Stewart

POKER-FACED PATRICK STEWART

 

Every actor knows that when they opt for their chosen profession, they are taking a huge gamble. But for Star Trek star Patrick Stewart it was more literally true than most. He owed his first parts to the poker table.

Long before Patrick explored distant galaxies as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, he made his professional debut on stage in a humble provincial rep, run on uniquely eccentric lines:

“My professional debut was at Lincoln Theatre Royal and I played Morgan in Treasure Island, directed by K.V. Moore, who was the artistic director,” says Patrick.

 

“He had a novel way of casting roles – and it was the only time I’ve ever encountered this. He and his associate director and some others used to play poker to determine who got the supporting roles.

 

“So this chap who’d had a particularly good day ended up playing Ben Gunn, Blind Pugh and some other part as well, three of the best supporting roles, all as a result of winning at poker.”

 

Pat rick is amenable, approachable and chatty – not a bit the Big Star surrounded by protective Public Relations executives, not least because he realises that in terms of his career, he has been dealt a wonderfully winning hand.

 

He’s a brilliant actor, which helps, but talent is no guarantee of success on any level – national, global or inter-galactic. Pat rick’s all-conquering success must have looked very unlikely as he grew up in Yorkshire. He failed his 11-plus, and quit his first job as a junior reporter on the local paper when the Editor said he was spending too much time at the theatre.

 

A year selling furniture enabled Patrick to scrape together enough cash to go to Bristol Old Vic drama school, but on graduating he struggled to find work:

 

“I was the only member of my year that hadn’t got a job. I went home to my parents and I was very unhappy, very depressed. I signed on at the Labour Exchange in Dewsbury and, out of the blue, I got this call from Lincoln. There was a job going as an acting ASM” (an Assistant Stage Manager who does the chores but gets to act too).

“They said ‘Would I take it?’ Would I take it? he repeats, disbelievingly. He took it.

 

“I think somebody had dropped out at the last minute – as has happened to me several times in my career, and I was so thrilled. I got on the train and went to Lincoln and I was paid £6. 10 shillings (£6.50) a week. It was my job to open the theatre, put the coffee on and sweep the stage in the morning. I was 19.

 

“I did about three productions too and I was as happy as I’ve ever been in my life.”

He looks happy now, as well as remarkably fit for a man of 65 who had minor heart surgery – a pre-emptive angioplasty – in 2004.

 

Comfortably casual in a brown leather blouson jacket, grey hound’s-tooth shirt and slacks, he looks like a much younger man, and he acts like one. His partner is rising Shakespearian actress Lisa Dillon, 39 years his junior, and the two of them have shared a swish apartment overlooking Tower Bridge since October 2004.

 

After his humble beginnings, Patrick himself went on to have a distinguished stage career with the RSC and the National Theatre with occasional forays into films and TV, but a big Hollywood movie or a major TV hit eluded him until the next bolt from the blue bought him Star Trek, and reported fees of $100,000 an episode, then movie spin-offs which brought progressively higher windfalls of $5m, $9.5m and finally $14m.

 

You can tell he loves to act, otherwise there’s really no need for him to be here. And he is thrilled to be back on British TV in Eleventh Hour, his first TV series since returning here to live.

 

“I’m having the best time, and it’s more than just professionally; it’s in every possible way,” grins Patrick. “I can’t believe my good fortune, that I was smart enough to uproot myself from Hollywood and come back here 18 months ago.

 

“The chance to do Eleventh Hour was absolutely perfect for me, because I wanted to do some mainstream television, and a series like this is exactly what I was looking for. It’s contemporary, urban and fairly gritty, and on a subject that interested me and is fundamentally serious yet still entertaining.”

 

The four feature-length thrillers cast Patrick as Professor Ian Hood, a retired physicist recruited by the Government as a Special Adviser who travels the country tackling disasters caused by ill-judged or illegal science.

 

Ashley Jensen, winner of two British Comedy Awards for her work opposite Ricky Gervais in Extras (in which Patrick coincidentally guested), plays his no-nonsense Special Branch bodyguard, Rachel Young.

 

Their investigations feature the illegal cloning of babies (prompted by the macabre discovery 27 identical, embryonic corpses buried in a field), an outbreak of disease that could become a national disaster, a seemingly bogus cancer cure and the topic closest to Patrick’s heart, a conspiracy to suppress evidence of catastrophic trends in global warming.

 

“The third episode is about a brilliant but eccentric scientist who has been doing research into global warming and greenhouse gases and creating models of the future.

 

“His conclusions are that the affects are much more extreme than we currently believe and his projection of the future is calamitous. But then he is ‘disappeared’ and it all looks very fishy.

 

“I had said to our producer when we first met that this would be a great opportunity to do something on the environment, so I’m delighted to see this episode dealing head-on with an issue of real importance.

 

“The evidence for global warming in the last six months has been shocking, and I saw it with my own eyes in Canada just a few weeks ago with the retreating of the glaciers and the predicted rise in sea levels.”

 

Maybe Patrick could gets some of his superhero pals to help us out. He was in Vancouver to make X-Men 3, the latest £200m blockbuster in the hit series, in which he plays another gifted man of science, Professor Charles Xavier. The movie is due out in May.

 

The real Patrick admits to being less scientifically proficient: “It’s been hard for me because, flying the Enterprise for seven years and 178 episodes, and sitting in Cerebro (his X-Men lair) has led people to believe that I know what I’m talking about.

 

“But I’m still trying to find out how to operate my air conditioning unit in my car, and I can’t programme my VCR. .. I’m not proud of it; I simply have no aptitude for it.”

 

He’d like to think that his new series might encourage young people to take up science, but admits that Ashley Jensen’s gun-toting, bed-hopping cop’s job might look more tempting: “The chances of getting laid are better anyway.”

 

I seriously doubt that, Patrick, I really do.

 

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