'That is no country for old men....Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect.' W.B.Yeats 'Sailing To Byzantium.' 1926
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Britain is a country with an old actor called Patrick Stewart and Captain Jean - Luc Picard of the Starship Enteprise
Britain said "Happy Birthday" to Patrick Stewart who was 71 years old yesterday.
Things you possibly didn't know about Patrick, that he:
* was born Yorkshire, where his mother was a weaver and textile worker and his father, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the British Army.
* has said that his father was " a very potent individual, a very powerful man who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode on to the parade ground, birds stopped singing. It was many, many years before I realised how my father inserted himself into my work. I've grown a moustache for Macbeth. My father didn't have one, but when I looked in the mirror just before I went on stage I saw my father's face staring straight back at me."
Playing Macbeth in 2008 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQnit4Gktt8
* as a child, endured poverty and disadvantage and in 2006, made a short video against domestic violence for Amnesty International, in which he recollected his father's physical attacks on his mother and the effect it had on him as a child.
* is a patron of 'Refuge', a charity for abused women and talks about his father's violence when he was a child :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPzVUGE3dds
* attributes his acting career to an English teacher at his junior school who "put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand and said, 'Now get up on your feet and perform'"
* left school at the age of 15, got a job on a local paper where he would attend local theatre rehearsals during work time and then invent the stories he reported.
* on becoming bald as a teenager, has said that : "I believed that no woman would ever be interested in me again. I prepared myself for the reality that a large part of my life was over" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqm_Iq8rFeg
* left the paper and after a period with the Manchester Library Theatre, served as member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 until 1982 appearing with Ben Kingsley and Ian Richardson.
* took roles in many major tv series without ever becoming a household name.
* in 1987, began his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' and worked on the series until 1994 and later said that when he went to his first 'Star Trek Convention' he " had expected that I would be standing in front of a few hundred people and found that there were two and a half thousand people and that they already knew more about me than I could ever possibly have believed. ”
Captain Picard Day :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiKwAS1qaCk&feature=related
* was made a 'Knight Bachelor' in the 2010 'New Year Honours' for 'Services to Drama'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIsFnN2anks
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