Making It So
by Patrick Stewart
My whole career had been, to a degree, defined by my speaking voice and its power. Yet now, in acknowledging the limitations that Picard and I faced as older men, I found my voice more full of expression and spontaneity than before. I could also hear my brain and my feelings connecting to this voice, bringing forward a nuanced, autumnal Picard who was new to me and, I hoped, the show’s viewers. I was to spend fourteen years as a full-time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with my three-year contract renewed four times. The RSC offered me as stable a life as any professional actor could wish for, akin to being a tenured professor at a top-notch university. This allowed Sheila and me, as busy as we both were, to settle eventually into a comfortable domesticity.
My whole career had been, to a degree, defined by my speaking voice and its power. Yet now, in acknowledging the limitations that Picard and I faced as older men, I found my voice more full of expression and spontaneity than before. I could also hear my brain and my feelings connecting to this voice, bringing forward a nuanced, autumnal Picard who was new to me and, I hoped, the show’s viewers.
I was to spend fourteen years as a full-time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with my three-year contract renewed four times. The RSC offered me as stable a life as any professional actor could wish for, akin to being a tenured professor at a top-notch university. This allowed Sheila and me, as busy as we both were, to settle eventually into a comfortable domesticity.
Still, I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman—again—and there is no getting around that. And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short. I needed to do better by the women with whom I was romantically involved. In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret.
“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.
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.”
"My whole career had been, to a degree, defined by my speaking voice and its power. Yet now, in acknowledging the limitations that Picard and I faced as older men, I found my voice more full of expression and spontaneity than before. I could also hear my brain and my feelings connecting to this voice, bringing forward a nuanced, autumnal Picard who was new to me and, I hoped, the show’s viewers."
"I was to spend fourteen years as a full-time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with my three-year contract renewed four times. The RSC offered me as stable a life as any professional actor could wish for, akin to being a tenured professor at a top-notch university. This allowed Sheila and me, as busy as we both were, to settle eventually into a comfortable domesticity."
"Still, I had cheated on my wife with a younger woman—again—and there is no getting around that. And just like my affair with Jenny Hetrick, my time with Lisa Dillon would also prove to be relatively short. I needed to do better by the women with whom I was romantically involved. In a life chockablock with joy and success, my two failed marriages are my greatest regret."
"“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."
"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.”"
"“I am so sorry, Patrick, but I am going to have to leave,” she said. “So many of these dear people I worked with are now dead, and it is making me so sad. I hope you enjoy the rest of it.” And off she went into the night."
"The North, as we call it, is analogous to the industrial Rust Belt in the United States: blue-collar and tough, with cultures and attitudes distinct from the snootier South, and London in particular."
- →“Patrick,” he said, “you will never achieve success…” Oh God, no. “…by insuring against failure.”
- →“Never touch another man’s fire.” I have passed on this lesson to my children and grandchildren.
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