Making It So: A Memoir

by Patrick Stewart

I loved being in a room with adults and being treated like I was one of them.

With Ruth, we didn’t read exclusively from Shakespeare. She exposed our provincial minds to No Exit, by Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist play from which the aphorism “Hell is other people” is drawn.

“You must understand, Patrick, the camera photographs thoughts.” Simple but profound. No matter what kind of acting you’re doing, you of course have to think. But the camera gets closer to you than any audience member ever will. What might be missed onstage, the camera will absolutely see.

Then I hand-mixed my own mortar and went to work. Laying those bricks was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

I had the chimney swept and then came the lighting ceremony. This was during my time with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I invited over some of my fellow actors, and we toasted the restored fireplace with sparkling wine as flaming logs lit up the hearth and brickwork, warming us. Thanks, champ.

This teaches the value of doing things by hand.

“Be yourself, or you will never be an actor!”

“Patrick,” he said, “you will never achieve success…” Oh God, no. “…by insuring against failure.”

I will reveal a secret I have withheld until now. Every time I am about to make a first entrance in a play, or the camera is about to roll on an important scene, I say to myself, out loud but very softly, “I don’t give a damn.”

Bill said to me, “Patrick, may I speak frankly?” Not a good start. Nothing good has ever come of this phrasing. If anyone ever asks you this question, tell them to bugger off.

For example, during the pandemic lockdown, I filmed a silly but very fun commercial for Uber Eats with Star Wars actor Mark Hamill. We shot different lengths and versions of the script, but even the longest was only forty-five seconds.

I looked this up.

Nowadays, someone in the position I was in might have legal recourse against such blatant workplace bullying.

It should be this way. I have been the target of workplace bullying.

I would not today tolerate a director handling his company with such condescension and coldness.

Good for him.

I like to say that Gawn allowed me to finally experience my teenage years—in my mid-twenties. As much as I have recounted my nights out at pubs and early attempts at romance, the truth is that I was working so hard as an actual teen, both to save money and to become a professional actor, that I had never truly enjoyed the wild freedom that most people associate with those years.

I tried to re-live those years.

As I got nearer, my nerves began to kick in. Am I good enough? Am I inventive enough? Can I bring anything new that they haven’t seen before?

If I kill Paul McCartney, it will be the only thing I will be remembered for.

I was bowled over, for all that had happened in his life, he’d matched the middle-aged man before him with the young man he had met in Bristol.

I wish I could remember people like that.

The Earl of Douglas is discomfited: Ten thousand bold Scots, two and twenty knights, Balk’d in their own blood did mine eyes see. On Holmedon’s plains. Of prisoners, Hotspur took Mordake the Earl of Fife, and eldest son To beaten Douglas; and the Earl of Athol, Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith.

That was the only moment of true connection I had with my role model in the nine months we worked together, but it was enough. I had been acknowledged by him, and in the very kindest way. Ian was, in every sense, a prince.

I wonder what Patrick thought of his peformance in ALIEN.

A couple of weeks into the shoot, I arrived on set to great excitement. Word was going around that someone called “Sting” would be joining the Dune cast. Please bear in mind that I am primarily a fan of classical music and not the most pop-culture-fluent guy around.

“You know,” I said, really holding forth now, “I have often wondered what makes a musician choose to haul around such a huge instrument as that. It must be impossible.” “No, I don’t play a double bass,” he replied. “I play the bass guitar. An electric one.” I was beginning to feel some unease with this Sting fellow, as if I’d put a foot wrong. “Do you… play in a group?” I asked. “Yes, with the Police,” he said. I broke into a broad grin. “You play in a police band?” I said. “Wow! How marvelous!”

and Macallan scotch on the rocks for yours truly.

Neil Peart liked McCallan.

“Data, you’re here to learn about the human condition. And there is no better way of doing that than by embracing Shakespeare. But you must discover it through your own performance, not by imitating others.”

Would Picard and the Enterprise crew find a way to escape the Borg’s grasp? A lot of viewers were irritated with us for leaving this question unresolved. I got a taste of just how much one day when I was driving in LA. As I waited at a red light, a car pulled alongside me and the passenger window opened. The driver leaned across his front seat to yell at me, “You have ruined our summer!”

The end of that season brought what remains to me perhaps the most moving TNG episode of all, “The Inner Light.” Its co-writer, Morgan Gendel, based it on the Beatles song by George Harrison, whose lyrics are themselves based on the words of the classic Chinese philosophical text the Tao Te Ching.

It is extraordinary, the reach of Star Trek. If I entered into its universe a stranger to its customs, I neared the end of my time on The Next Generation recognizing that I was a custodian of something held dear by millions of people, probably hundreds of millions.

It’s a major injustice to me that Brent has never won an Emmy for playing Data, not to mention the androids Lore and B-4 and the bizarre Soong family of mad scientists.