Patrick Stewart Career Retrospective | SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations

welcome Patrick thank you so much for being here well thank you all for attending Friday evening it is the start of the weekend you know yet here you are I'm delighted and honored to see all of you and thank you for the invitation my pleasure that clip from logo that's gonna film four times makes me want to see it even again one more time tonight we're gonna be talking about that later on but I've it kind of brings to mind something about your characters that I always have found interesting which is that even your strongest leaders have a vulnerability to them have a humanity and your lions and winter still have a roar I'm wondering if as you're getting ready for the performance kind of thinking about it taking it apart you think about what makes these men tick and what's your process for that it's always different um I when I left drama school in 1959 I had a process because we were taught a process this is how you prepare to play a role and it was very rigorous and very detailed and very exact I my life consists of boxes and has done for years and years and years because I'm always moving and so they're always boxes cluttering up at wherever I live and I opened one of them and I found my drama school notebooks and I read through because we had to write down what this acting process was and part of it was you read you read the play all the way through first of all for time when is it happening then you read it all again for place where is it happening you know actually I've never ever talked about this before and and then we read it oddly eccentrically for weather because the principal of my school believed that all of us are profoundly affected by the atmospheric conditions around us and we would write notes on all of these things there would be where are we when are we and what's the weather like and then we would read the play again I mean it was all about reading reading reading the play over and over and over again you would write down what do people say about the character when he's present when he's there what do people say about the character when he's absent what does the character say about himself and all these things are so pages and pages and pages of notes I do remember the principal and we had dazzlingly brilliant principal of my school which was the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School I owe fans of Bristol good a great school and I was very happy to be in Bristol because I would have just lost myself in London in those days I would anyway and of course this round of his name was Duncan Ross went on to be for many many years the head of the of the Seattle rep and also he continued to teach as well so he had a quite a strong influence on American theatre as well as he had on many of us who were graduates of of Bristol Rick but he said to us at one point it's tiresome writing all this stuff down but now at the age of I was 17 you have to do it because this is the only way we can lock in and they really talked about locking in this process of how do you prepare from the script to play the role a time will come he said when you won't have to do this you'll just absorb it as you've worked more and more and read more and more plays and more diverse plays the the process will become second nature which I'm happy to say is where I've ended up right now but they're there sometimes I I will say about a scene I was saying to the director what is the weather like in this scene because I don't know and it was linked to it was you see you've got me talking about my studies of 58 years ago we we also followed a pretty rigorous basically Stanislavski method the method not exactly as it was taught here in the United States in the Actors Studio and so forth although the Actors Studio by a second hand process had a huge impact on me because when I was 13 I went to the cinema the cinema was my luck was my only entertainment we had no television in my home in fact I was 23 when we got our first television so and by the way there was nothing to watch anybody one channel which started at 7 o'clock in the evening and ended 11:00 we had 4 hours of TV so movies picture house and it was a great time the 50s for movie theaters they were all flourishing them and it was a time when the transition from black and white to Technicolor was fully engaged and I love technically my life was drab was challenging and at times a little dangerous and I didn't like it much so the cinema gave me the perfect escape from my own life which I didn't like at all and I remember and I still occasionally get it especially in aeroplanes have you ever seen a movie in an airplane that you didn't like you have oh your critic no you're an actress I have this this theory that if ever I were to produce a movie which is unlikely but it might happen I would have the critics screening of the movie happen in a 747 we get them all on board and they will be champagne and they would all have their own and then we would show them the movie because in my space I have never seen a movie in a plane that I didn't love my friend from Star Trek days Jonathan Frakes used to say you know what Patrick's favorite movie is know what is it thinking Elia Kazan or you know Steven Spielberg it's actually honey I blew up the kids because I came back from a trip one Monday morning when we were shooting the series and said I have seen the most of the other thing it must be something about the altitude and the champagne I think actually I drink on planes far less than I used to huh I'm finding that it's actually a much better way to fly yes water is the way to go um but I cry at movies now you're gonna really as somebody who's a movie fan I I've flown four times on British Airways this month that's my airline of choice when you've got a knighthood I'm not saying that you know doors are open but there's always the chance of a fancy upgrade you know you get the extra pillow at least I'm sure right exactly or you know your glass refilling right before you even thought you didn't and the nice thing is flying with the same airline you get to know cabin crew and you see the same people all the time but um what's today Friday I said Friday already on Wednesday I flew to Chicago from London and it's still October and I had thrown on British Railways three times already in October and they only changed the movies at the end of the month and I knew exactly what was waiting for me and I don't know what's happened to British Airways but their movies selection is not good and actually they were showing Logan but well you really seen it I think you can't be seen watching your own [Laughter] I do remember once back in the business class days flying and to my horror the screen move because remember there used to be just one screen at the front of the movie and it was Star Trek but I will come to the point you take your time last thing my wife said to me before I left this evening was don't talk too much oh isn't that why I'm there all respect to sunny talked too much look the man asked you quest he's been preparing all day no I went that that that that that to see that one did watch one movie and I was about 20 minutes of it and I can tell you what it was and I and then I realized British Airways have a classic section and so oh now here was interesting and all of a sudden up came Shawshank Redemption now my son that was in a stage production of Shawshank Redemption last year which was quite successful in toward England I had never seen it oh yes indeed they will take my knighthood away from him if they knew and I thought ambit I will watch it I don't really like watching great movies I was told it was a great movie on an airplane but I will watch it I actually cried three times doing that I mean I mean so big wifey saying what's wrong what's wrong oh you're watching a movie of course what a beautiful exquisite and perfect the performance is the direction the camerawork all of it and so emotionally potent I found get busy living or get busy dying right yeah they say yeah yeah well you know you mentioned growing up and watching the movies at Muirfield right that's where you grew up in England that's where I grew up it's a community with eleven thousand people and we had three cinemas yeah Wow that's actually pretty yeah fantastic and there was a veil the Town Hall and they're sold Oh Oh what was the first you remember the first big movie that you mentioned the Technicolor films was it like something like giant or something big on the screen like that well I used to have to go to Mass anaise because I wasn't old enough to be let out in the evening and how times have changed you know when it was a case of a rated movie that I couldn't get into because I was too young and not just me but my pals did the same thing we would go down the queue when people used to queue to get into movies and find a likely-looking person and say please will you take me in accompanied by an adult can you imagine children being recommended to do that today and then the moment you gave them the money and they bought your ticket the moment you're inside you said goodbye and you left them and you said where you want to sit you know yeah I as I said I love Technicolor oh mile of Technicolor and so Doris Day Debbie Reynolds Rock Hudson Tab Hunter I'm on I wanted to marry Doris Day I was so in love with her and the voice the singing voice and the acting a blonde hair and then the big transformation came when I was 13 and on a Monday nights because I that's what I spent my money on nothing else just movies I I went to the asalto cinema and see a movie I had not heard of I mean how could I hear of it I didn't read reviews or anything like that and I saw from the stills outside that it was in black and whites and and I really didn't want to watch a black-and-white movie it was a Monday night and I wanted to have color you know and the movie was called on the waterfront and I saw it three times that week I even took my poor mother to see it but no idea what was going on in the movie and I kept trying to explain what was that yeah it changed my vision of the movies big first of all people acted like real people yeah and with all great respect to Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson it wasn't quite the way people worked in those days there was a heightened style even about film acting in those days I didn't know the name of Elia Kazan I knew of Marlon Brando of course but that was about it but the work of Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger and and well I'm thinking just up on the waterfront oh yeah and Eva Marie Saint it was extraordinary Lee Jay Cobb and I didn't know people made movies about people like me now I wasn't brought up on the the Brooklyn waterfront although I actually now live within stone's throw of Red Hook gives me great satisfaction every time I think of that but we were working-class we were we had no money just enough to pay the rent and my father was a kind of semi skilled laborer my mother worked in a weaving shed in a huge massive noisy dusty dirty weaving shed for 40 years she worked and she loved every moment of it I once went to visit her and she was a tiny woman my mum and she was operating not one but two of these huge machines bigger than the stage that we're sitting on here and so I was aware of the you know pay scales and unions and and bosses who were bastards and so much of the subject matter of on the waterfront I understood even though it was a different kind of existence from the one that I lived in and I realized that you could make movies about real people and from then on I'm sorry to say that the Doris Day infatuation just gradually faded away yeah and yeah and Eva Marie Saint I'll tell you a little story about even very Saints I was playing Winter's Tale at Stratford on Aven and the theatre the horrible nasty bastard King Leontes Dame Peggy Ashcroft said to me you don't have played that part not an actual life has ever enjoyed playing that role because he's a really bad guy in the audience hates him right from the very beginning they hate him and something had happened about that production I was offered the role I didn't want to do it because of what I've been told no no no no it's a horrible role and the director asked to see me and he said I never worked with him before but I liked him and he was a very clever guy philosopher a man he was he was he was a professor of philosophy and the theatre director and he said to me here's what you have to understand this man already lives inside you he's there the best and the very worst of him is inside you and all I'm gonna ask you to do is let it out and I give you my word I remember him saying this so clearly I will never leave your side I will be there all the time and nothing bad will happen to you and I took him at his word and trusted in and I went for it and a friend of mine and an American professor Shakespeare UCLA saw it two or three times and liked it very much and he said you know your production and your performance would have been more successful if the audience hadn't felt that they shouldn't be there watching that it was actually two privates and two personal which was a kind of backhanded fabulous compliment that's how I took it anyway and won and so when the show was over I was always drained emotionally drained and everything and I would usually sit in my underwear in the number one dressing room at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and I would have a glass of whiskey and the stage doorman knew that I would always be the last one out and we had this Agreement I will you know I won't take it right up to the wire because he had to do his rounds and lock everything up but one night while I'm sitting there thinking about the evening there was a knock at my door and I said yeah I'm leaving I'll be out in a few minutes and a voice said mr. Stewart no no we just like to say hello female American voice and I went and I pulled open the door and there was Eva Marie Saint and her husband a wonderful husband and she said we were halfway back to our hotel and we were talking about your show and her husband said to it you know what maybe he's still in the theatre let's go back and see if we can find him so they came in and they shared my glass of whiskey with me and so can you imagine what it was like for an actor who just played King Leontes in The Winter's Tale at the Royal Shakespeare Company to have Eva the reef Saint in my dressing room she cropped up once more in my life on the evening that I had signed my contract to do Star Trek The Next Generation six seasons as it turned out it was seven I went to a dinner party and she was there and she said so what's going on with you it's a long time since I saw you who's been happening and I said well I've just signed on to do this and I'm not sure if I've done the right thing and she said you have done absolutely the right thing you you have got a job that so many actors in this town would kill for so enjoy it as much as you can and that was the last time that I ever saw it but I've got to tell you also and I will shut up I promise you it's coming to an end the same delightful hostess invited me some years later to a dinner and I was a paramount we were shooting and so I was a little late arriving and when I when I got there I was taking off my coat quickly in the hallway and as I was doing that I'd seen in the dining room there were a dozen places hid around a big dining table and I saw there were named places there you know people's names the seating was all arranged and I looked into the living room where everyone was and sitting on a sofa was Karl Malden of course who so memorably played the priest in on the waterfront and I grabbed hold of the hostess arm and said look I know you've got place name please you must sit me next to calm holder I will explain later but you know like you know like it was a gorgeous actress well to be sitting next to Malden and dear sweet man I must have wrecked his evening with with questions like so in that scene it's when all the the the crates of whiskey have been dropped on the stevedores head because he's against the Union and you come in and you give this sermon a sermon down on the hole and all around it the different layers of the ship beautifully shot scene and and I said finally you finish your sermon about goodness and honesty and and and and the need for people to be respected and he gets on to the hoist and as and the hoist starts to go through up through all the different layers of the ship and I said it's a moment when you're halfway up and you reach into your pocket and you take out a packet cigarette and and you put it in your mouth and that cigarettes kind of crumpled and you light it I said was that in the script or we're talking about something that happened forty presenting the script I mean or you know did the director suggest that you should and it was so unexpected you're a priest and we don't used to seem pleased smoking why what happened oh poor mr. Maldon huh this is this and he said why did I smoke the cigarette oh yes he said I really needed a smoke yes it was the perfect answer you know you have an impulse in you respondents right can't always respond to the impulses but living in the moment it's right what he was saying yep that's writing up no enemies and and like all great actors that moment of of sort of inspiration comes from something that's just from the gut and he recalled that forty years later probably just like it was yesterday which I love yeah now you mentioned a couple of things one is that that on the waterfront felt familiar to you growing up in Muirfield and you also mention the the director saying I'll be by your side the whole time which reminds me of something that you said before which is that since sessile dormand who is such an important person in your life gave you that copy of Merchant of Venice when you were 12 right that you have always felt safest on stage and I think that that's such a beautiful sentiment and would love to talk to you more about that would how do you still feel it that you still feel sort of safest honest age whether it's a movie set a TV set on stage do you feel still that same level of safety it's different on a movie set or a TV set the whole process is thrilling and exciting and challenging nature but one of the reasons I love going back to the theater whenever I can is that you tell the whole story at one go and you know there's a beginning of the middle and an end and then it's done and you're also playing it in front of a live audience and I tell myself this at every single performance somewhere out there there is one person who is watching a live play for the first time and has never seen one before it reminds me of a cartoon I saw in punch the the kind of English version of of the New York New Yorker where it's it's like all of you it's it's a cartoon he's looking at the front row in a theater and they're all everybody's front row is like this except for one person who is doing this and the caption was regular theatergoers and one first-timer and that's the guy that I I think about he's out there yeah and he doesn't know what's gonna happen next and especially with Shakespeare that's wonderful yeah you know they they they don't know that that that when Hamlet goes to King kill Claudius while he's on his knees praying that he won't actually do it he will put the sword down they think he's gonna kill himself it must be wonderful and I think that's where a lot of us actors have to put ourselves into that position of this has never happened before and it's how you create the on a run of like I just well last year in McKellen I did the Pinter play no-man's land in London and we did eight shows a week for six months and yet every night has to be for the first time it has never happened before and that is part of the process that can bring you to that point where yes you cannot turn everything well some actors can upset the applecart literally but you can be in that rare moment with a group of people who've never seen it before yeah you mentioned Star Trek when you were talking about Ava Marie Saint and that brings up Shakespeare as well because you've said that you felt out of your depth at when you when you you know we're kind of just getting in there but you also felt as if so much of your career had been building up to it and preparing for it because there is that symbiotic link between Star Trek and Shakespeare both you know in the text and in the subtext in so many ways and that's that was that's that's true right that there is there that you felt at the 1987 30 years ago exactly let's have a round of applause for that that that you felt everything's been working up to this point right yeah the reason that this is known is because of something I said to a journalist when when when they the new series of next generation was announced by the way the Los Angeles Times in announcing the cast described me as unknown British Shakespearean actor and my dear friend brent Spiner who played date of the androids so magnificently and if ever there was an injustice done it was that that man never even got a damn nomination or anything for it and his work was astounding and he had he had a poster made and he stuck it on the door of my trailer and it said in big letters beware unknown British so yeah but I got irritated I hadn't done press like that before you don't do press yeah at least I didn't do it in those days now if I do a play then there's much more press but I have become really irritated by the suggestion that a number of journalists were making that by turning away from the Royal Shakespeare Company and all the Shakespeare I've been doing and the West End of London and BBC and so forth that and coming into a first-run syndicated science-fiction show that was a spin-off of an earlier show than had been on that I was somehow slumming that I had gone way way down market and I was offended about this I was so thrilled and excited to be in this thing and the kind of it you know how does it feel you know to be you know wearing a spacesuit pretend you're flying through space and all of that and I said listen finally all those years of sitting in the thrones of England in all of those Shakespearean plays all the years of being a prince or a Baroness an Oracle or a king when nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the enterprise the journalist printed that which was very nice I was kind of having a go at him yeah but here's the thing I didn't answer your question before that which was about safety as I've suggested my childhood was chaotic and a little unsafe and chaos isn't good for children and when I was first put into a play you've mentioned his name sessile doorman I spoke to him only a few weeks ago on his 94th birthday the man without whom none of none of this would have happened for me because his influence over me was enormous he was the first man to put Shakespeare in my hand first man to cast me in a play with adults because he was a director and an actor himself and yeah the moment that I walked on to the stage which was the stage of my school Hall and in a darkened auditorium and bright lights on the stage I never had any unease I I was nervous but never fearful never frightened and still that continues because I knew who I was I knew what was gonna happen to me more or less I knew how it was all going to end up and it was safer than my life and so the security that gave me then over the one side actually this wasn't real a full understand until I came to Los Angeles and found that there was a thing called therapy [Laughter] and and years and years of very expensive la therapy gave me the insight to see that it was that feeling of safety that I had nothing bad could happen to me that I think gave me the sometimes the courage to do things that otherwise I might not have done yeah yeah well it's all there in the text it's all there on the stage and so it's a there's a comfort level to that and that that safety is there yeah problems begin when you leave the stage door and go back into the outside world was there anything about Pagar you mentioned others have as well and as part of that amazing cast that at a certain point obviously the characters and the actor sort of merged on that next generation and and there was that fluidity but I'm wondering if there was something about a card that you knew that you never told anybody else that you haven't mentioned the audience's that you just sort of kept it yourself you're thinking he did it's something that happened to him here there was this little aspect of his personality that you just had in the back of your head for that character you don't even have to share it with us now if you if you don't want but if there was something like that that you had in preperation marvelous thing about Star Trek was that it put the 8 of us the principal characters on the ship into such diverse situations and we had which which Bill Shatner and Leonard never had we had the what was it called the place where we could become other people holodeck thank you very much we had the holodeck so we could I mean I became a cinema noir detective at one point I was a Shakespearean character at another point and and we could live out these other existences and often I used to suggest to the writers and producers that that we should look at maybe the fantasy world of jean-luc picard a little bit and see what those fantasies might actually be the detective idea was not mine it was one of the senior writers idea but it it helped to release in a life of of so many of those kind but I can't say that I can come up with a direct answer to your question they will kind of merge those and say one of my favorite episodes of the series is tapestry in which Captain Picard realizes as something he had looked at previously as sort of a negative in his life turns out to be the thing that set him on his path as a leader I'm wondering if there was something like that in your own life maybe that you looked at at the time and saying I shouldn't have done that that was a wrong turn and later in life you said you know what had it not been for that moment or that performance or that that left turn I took I wouldn't have gotten to the right place anything like that I I had no real education I went to school but it was not an academic school it was it was it was the kind of school you sent failures to them you failed your exams you went to the school I went to you didn't go to grammar school so it was very very non-academic and and I was a very I had to be because of my childhood I was a very grown-up child I was adult before my time so I was never a teenager at all I am now believe me yeah I know what it's like now to be a teenager and they the I'm sorry I forgot where I was gonna go with this one I was talking about and sort of the nurse that you never got a chance to sort of be a kid and oh yes yes no it's gone let's move on well let me just I'll help you in bridge a little bit and just sort of say that one of the things I've often loved though in reading about you is that there there is an aspect of of let's say teaching that that has kind of gone through you were discovered as it were for starts right by a TV producer hearing you teaching and hearing you're visiting a class you were a chancellor at the University of Huddersfield in England for ten years and you go back to murrs field a lot in fact you're phenomenal and I'm just thinking about it now still fills my heart with emotion one man performance of a Christmas carol was first given in Merce filled in yes absolutely his first given in were filled in in 1984 is I've kind of it when you first try it out as a three-hour production of it before it got to Broadway in 91 right let's talk about that how did how did that come about and and the the one man phenomenal man show 30 characters of A Christmas Carol that got you a Drama Desk Award in 91 hold on to that question because I remembered what I was okay when I left this non-academic school I was head boy of my school 14 it was ridiculous I and I was at meetings with the headmaster and I was just this kind of serious adult who ought to be and then having fun and strings were pulled and they seemed to think that I had something else going for me and I got a job on my local newspaper I was a cub reporter for just about a year when finally I was given an ultimatum by the editor of the paper over his desk in his office which was make up your mind what you want to be do you want to be a newspaper reporter do you want to be a journalist or do you want to continue with this stupid acting that just seemed to be so obsessed with because I was you know I would I would be sent on jobs and I wouldn't go to them because I had a rehearsal I would have complicated networks of people who would phone copy into me all other people who will go there and write it and I would pay them to do this because because I had to be at a rehearsal and on one or two occasions I made stuff up you could get a job now at Fox oh yeah [Laughter] well more anything any network really yes nowadays and he was very upset about this and I was found out I remember handing him my copy to the sub editor and him st. Patrick and whenever I had that tone of voice I knew I was in trouble and and he said what is this did this really happen well mm not really Joe in the way that you know it happens here but he said you made it up didn't you well yeah I made it up and and that's a horrible thing to do you can't be a journalist and invent copy so he said it's up to you what you're gonna do and I said goodbye and I went upstairs packed up my old typewriter and left the job with my friend who worked on the paper with me said you're crazy how crazy I mean you were so lucky to get this job you had no education what are you gonna do well I went to work in a furniture store I sold furniture for 60 months and I was very very good furniture and the the opportunity to be a professional actor was given me by sessile dormant and by a wonderful man called gentle Tyler and my teacher I had a teacher for five years Ruth Ruth we know in long long gone and they I look back and I honestly don't know why I thought a lot about this and I think I've actually have I've talked to cessful dormand about it why this happened I'm very curious to know how did it come about that a young boy from a rough background with no education with everything laid out for his life to be miserable mess should have evolved in this way because I didn't really I didn't really understand it sessile dormant has always refused to give his opinion on why that came about he was very charming he was invited to my luncheon party when I went to the palace and got my knighthood a dear friend said we'll have a luncheon you invite whoever you like and I invited my headmaster to come to this luncheon because I thought it would it would make both of us very happy and then they asked they went around the table saying each one of you say one thing that you think people don't know about Patrick Stewart and of course nobody knew who sets or dormant was and when he came to him he said well the fact is my life and Patrick's life has changed because for five years he called me sir and now the tables are turned it put all that into a yeah have you always been I would imagine that being in a furniture store and being just sort of out in the world like that are you an observer do you watch people do you sort of file them away both their traits and maybe people you know we all do don't I mean it's it's one of the great delights of doing what we do or I would imagine also being a writer no experience is wasted none you know you all know what sense memory is and sense memory plays a huge part in what I do and quite I have arthritis and the other day I had to have injections in my knuckles and if you've never had injections and to where Bo there's a lot of bone it's uncomfortable and I had to have eight done four in each hand and after the third one all I could think was I'm not going to get through this I know now what's coming and and I I don't think I can tolerate it and then the sense-memory kicked in and said you're an actor this is important remember what you're feeling remember what you're experiencing remember what that pain does do you remember the fear that you feeling when you see the needle come back up again to do another finger and and and the so much of the pain was just dissipated because it was work I was practising and then that gets filed away in the sense memory bank and a moment will come at some point when I'd have to be fearful or in agony something I will drag that one out and it's um that's why I think as a profession on the whole very few actors have breakdowns actually very very very very few you'd look at some other professions and it's endemic emotional breakdowns and I think it's because the what we do is a glorious form of therapy in itself that we are continually having to put ourselves into someone else's shoes look at the world through someone else's eyes and I I firmly believe that if in this world particularly in the world of politics if people could do that more let's just change places for a moment and see what the situation looks like now very very different and that's what we do all the time we are continually seeing the world through new eyes and I think I think it helps to keep us relatively rooted you know you bring up the pain and fear and agony and that brings us of course to Logan I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit because this phenomenal film in this phenomenal performance is so special and it's so interesting because we were talking before we came on stage one of the things that does and we'll get back to your first performance as Charles Xavier in a moment but it reverses everything we know about Charles Xavier this is a character who's always been powerful always been in control and we come to him in Logan with the table's turned and what was it like approaching this character for the seventh time with that situation it was a dream situation I think for any actor it would be I had spent 15 years as Charles Xavier and I think six movies and there are little appearances cameos in the Wolverine movies and I liked Charles Xavier he was a sensitive highly intelligent by borderline intellectual with great compassion and affection in indeed love for for those those young people that he had found and brought into the Charles Xavier's school for gifted children or for learning disorders I think I improvised in the middle and and then along comes the script where all of that is gone instead there is instability discomfort confusion unhappiness anger fury and even an abrupt change in his language as well I mean I had the gasp the first time an audience had some of the things that came out of my mouth just now in this clip and and and most of all very very dangerous a man who has about him an uncontrollable impulse that can destroy people's lives and it's brutal and savage so without ever letting go of or losing sight of who the original Charles Xavier being the fun and if fun it was was to put him down and say what what if what if this had happened to Charles what if if he couldn't think properly it couldn't think clearly his language was transformed what if he was a terror to two other individuals what would happen and and we were blessed Hugh and and Daphne Keane and myself that we had james mangold because james had a vision for Logan that was not a conventional superhero science fiction fantasy film vision at all and he wanted to make this movie very very much first of all he got Hugh on his side and Hugh became an absolute champion for the style of the movie and who Logan had become as well because he's transformed too he's a guy driving a crappy old limo in order to keep Charles alive yeah that's why he's doing it and the studio I got to mention them because they were fantastic 20th Century Fox got behind this approach when really they would have had every reason to say no no no no just give us another x-men movie that's what we want and James wouldn't and and once i was on part of the project - i joined both of them and and we were continually looking for those elements that would at times detach us as much as possible from what had gone before so that people feel that they're watching something quite new and quite quite different we had such a great time I loved working with with Mangold the soccer is a great passion of mine this hand was actually in the hand of Lionel Messi on Monday night not because I particularly wanted to meet him but my wife did Lionel Messi converted her to soccer and she had no interest in it all until she saw how this man played ball and I knew he was gonna be at this event I'd accepted an invitation to present an award because I'm I'm also president of the Academy of a premiership football team in England team I've supported since I was seven and I knew there would be a lot of grit because it was an international event it wasn't just the the British Football League and I didn't know that that Messi would be there but I hoped that he wouldn't I told my wife if he's there I will do everything in my power to bring the two of you face to face and and she said what if he becomes my celebrity pass I said that's fine [Laughter] and it was really really hard because there was security like you've never seen like you know it might have been the royal family in attendance because there was less e and Cristiano Ronaldo and and and there was the other great Argentinian an old guy now Maradona Thank You Diego Maradona la mano de Dios he actually handed the ball into the nests of the British goal and I'm a match once and and you couldn't get you couldn't get to them when I was sitting on the front row but right at one end of the cinnamon and all these guys were the other end of the cinema and I decided when the show is over I'm gonna make a run for it and they were saying thank you everybody what a great night thank you wonderful come again next bah bah bah bah and I turned to my wife and said you follow me and stay close I shot along the front of between the edge of the stage in the front row scuse me and I know people thinking oh my god there's some cry system something has gone wrong and then I hit the security wall excuse me excuse me I was like yes Patrick I would say I'm sorry I embarrassed myself I was saying is that for sure the furniture I arrived at and they were going oh yeah I saw I saw Cristiano Ronaldo look up and go who's this guy and I couldn't see I couldn't see Liam he wasn't he wasn't he had actually turned around the bed down a receipt and he's quite short and so he just vanished behind everybody and I stood behind him and then he stood up and turn around and we were face to face ah and his face oh you see this is very emotional for me he just beamed in time and I said Sarah or Messi porfavor me esposa [Laughter] and they shook hands and and and and then his and then I said can I please take a photograph of the two together so I took the photo selfie I took a photograph for Lionel Messi and my wife's eyes I said and then his wife said and I want to photograph with you [Laughter] that was only four nights ago and as you can see I'm still a little stimulated by his and his well his response at seeing you I mean that's always been our response to seeing you on screen and which is one of the reasons why Logan is said you've thought you lost 20 pounds for for Logan right and there are moments when Hugh picks you right up off the off the ground that was one little reason yeah so they yeah but I mean and you lose it you look I mean Charles is is it's a different Charles that we see yeah it's and I'm very lucky that when I when I work at losing weight which I can do I'm happy to say relatively easily I lose it here and so you know within seven or eight pounds I'm looking emaciated and that was really great for Charles in the movie because I I wanted you know this guy we've seen sitting in this wheelchair upright strong determined clear skin clear eyes I wanted it to be as big a shock as as possible and and and luckily James Mangold was thoroughly in favor of that approach well the film is it's fine eyes one of my favorite films of the year and it's a it's a pair becomes a parable about parenthood and about looking forward and looking back and looking at the future and and all of those things we're gonna take some questions from the audience in just a moment but um you know with the with the notes that we have from everybody but your your story about sports reminds me of just is there anything that you enjoy doing that fulfill that that kind of feeds your acting your processes but isn't necessarily related to adding it could be sports it could be woodworking it should be painting anything like that or music but things that ultimately when you're done you say I have I've refilled the coffers a little bit feel you know reenergize little bit and ready to go again well I've taken up painting oh yeah again at my wife's insistence and uh III III have I'm a collector and so art plays a very very important part in my life I talk to these damn paintings I will have been away for quite a while and when I go home I go from room to room and I say hi sorry I've missed you how easy I mean people have overheard me saying this it who are you talking to nobody but they're a big part of my life and she said I think there's something that you could do with a pot of paints and give it a shot and that's what's happened hours pass and I don't eat I don't drink except it was this good stuff and and I don't know what I'm doing I have completely untaught I'm gonna have lessons after Christmas and that means a great deal to me I play a lot of table tennis I was playing today my neighbor and I we have a table in the garage in Brooklyn and we play extremely intense and passionate game of table tennis and thanks to my in-laws who are from Nevada wonderful people at my wedding when it was my turn to make a speech I started out by saying there's nice one say that the rumor circulating that I have married sunny so as to be near her parents is entirely true because they're so fabulous and they skied they're all incredible skills but also crazy to somebody who's in their locker room took me aside one day and said you you you ski with the mikaelsons and I said yeah he said don't do what they do that kook they're crazy you know don't do what they do and they didn't wear helmets or anything like there was free skate and I went up to stay with them at their cabin and near Tahoe and over dinner they said oh and by the way we're leaving about seven o'clock to morning we like to be on the slopes good and early and and your lessons begin at 8 o'clock what lessons is this you don't ski do you and I said no I don't ski and I am NOT going to start now I was 74 thereabouts and I said no it's too late they said don't you I said yes all my life I wanted to ski I sit and I watch winter sports on television any was like must you feel like and they said well there you are you're gonna do so they booked me for hours for four mornings one-on-one with a wonderful middle-aged Austrian instructor and on the fourth morning at 12 noon she said okay that's it yeah you're done enjoy have fun and I got on the biggest lift and I went up to the top of the mount and it was thank the Lord it was a quiet day as it often is there and I skied down the mountain from top to bottom I didn't fall I went very slowly at times mind you but there was a moment coming down the mountain again this is sense memory stuff this is why nothing is wasted and I was getting more and more confidence and and feeling was good and and then I heard this noise sure and I knew what that was because I seen it and heard it on television but I realized I'm making that noise it's coming from my skis and I absolutely love it I will never get any better than I am now I've reached the kind of point where to go any further would be insane but I do yes I do sort of scary stuff occasionally when it scares me yeah you don't want to be that you don't to be the guy looking whyville the sports like going down at the beginning you don't to be that guy you want to be nice and smooth yeah absolutely and the conditions up there just beautiful yeah so these things have come into my life including my wife and well I said to you earlier I'm learning what fun it can be to be a teenager yeah that's part of it yeah I love that we're gonna take some questions now from our great audience the question from mark he asks what advice / tips would you give to actors of directors of Shakespeare well I I would actually propose to them that they might try using the same principles that my teacher taught me back you know all those years ago that kind of reading of a play how to read a play and determine what it means to you and how you can bring that into communicative roles so that other people can see what it means to you but for actors and directors it's kind of different isn't it I first of all if you're American please don't do it in an English accent when I did the tempest here at the Delacorte a long time ago oh I made the decision very early on I said to the director you must not allow a single member of this cast to use a fake English accent and furthermore I will do everything in my power to be as American as I possibly can and it was a transformation and a liberation for me to be saying those great speeches of Prospero but with the different sound coming out of my mouth was with such a treat so yeah stick to what is comfortable and familiar and trust the language because it will do so I the calendars are different as some of you may be aware from our antics he is because it's bedtime now in England he is two performances away from his last performance tomorrow night in King Lear he's playing King Lear and he said to me because he's played it before this is different you know I'm I've never before and this wasn't a prompting by me he said I've never before just trusted the words the way that I am doing now that the words are so perfect that all you need to do is release them set them free just let them go and they will do so much of the work with you now I have not been able to see his performance and unless it go somewhere else I won't see it but he has great insight into things when I was about to start rehearsing Macbeth and he is one of the great Macbeth's of of my generation he and and Dame Judi did it brilliantly with the RSC we met somewhere and I said man I'm starting on my bed give me just one thought will you just one thing that that was important to you when you did it can you share that with me and he said yes so you got that line it's quite famous quite well-known tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and I said yeah but I know what that means he said I think perhaps you don't because what I'd like you to think about and to try is the important word in that line of verse is not tomorrow it's and and I instantly I knew what he was telling me I absolutely knew what he was telling me that it's not just listing there go this way and then there's a next day and then did I say but next next day and everything that I did was built around that wonderful note that the McKellen gave me and I would not I don't think I could have thought of it I could not have thought of tomorrow and you tomorrow and tomorrow and and people would come back and say that moment when you did that that was it and I said well you must thank Sir Ian McKellen he gave me the know you guys became great friends on x-men but you first saw him you first watched him backstage even before you didn't even really speak to him right that was decades earlier right while to intimidate it yeah yeah yeah yeah he was in leptin to the world a great actor I think he was being reviewed by major London theater critics when he was still a student at Cambridge the word had already gone round there's something happening you should go and have a look and it was Ian McKellen and of course he was in the same he was at Cambridge same time as Derek Jacobi and the same time as Terry Hartman and our role Shakespeare Company acted there was a little kind of Cambridge mafia and of course Peter Hall and John Baum that's great great directors were also Cambridge Cambridge graduates so he was he's clever as well he's smart and he'd had an education and that's it last thing that I had and he was also gorgeous oh you see photographs of the young Ian McKellen dreamy and I wasn't you know I looked like this so I was intimidated by that and he always has a circle of friends around him who obviously adored him and I was intimidated by that so I just have a spoke to him and finally we were cast together in a play brilliant Tom Stoppard play called every good boy deserves favour not very well known largely because it needs a symphony orchestra to be performed and that don't come cheap but we we had a couple of scenes in that and I felt a little more comfortable in his company it was x-men that brought us together we had adjoining luxury trailers thank you very much 20th Century Fox and with movies like that as so many of you will know you spend a lot more time waiting to actor than actually acting yeah who was it I've always tried to find out somebody told me once it was Burt Reynolds who said they'd pay me for waiting I do the acting for nothing boy Wow is that true and so we would hang out in one another's trailers and drink tea and drink coffee and later in the day it might be something else and and we found we had so much in common and a lot of it was just a absolute passion for Shakespeare and the Royal Shakespeare Company and movies too in the and acting just the business of acting so we've we've done a lot together in the last few years yeah that's all you could do it's amazing and it's also one of the great public friendships I feel like we you know the pictures that you guys did putting out Twitter is just for the world to enjoy was just so wonderful we're gonna take another question not my idea I don't have to give credit for this it was my wife's idea in restaurant fonder in in Park Slope she said I've had a thought I want you to think about this is a way of promoting Waiting for Godot and she came up with the idea of go-go and didi do and do NYC and and we're sitting there you know with our meal we we just made a list of what are all the iconic sights in New York and we'll go to all of them and and I I think it was it might have been Ian's idea why don't we wear the bowler hats yeah we'll be true Lester will be tourist wearing bowler hats and I am told that what the success of that approach has radically altered a lot of the way PR companies are approaching publicizing I mean using social media in that way to let people know what's going on and to give them an insight into something to do with the play we had it was perfect to watch to just ever do that every picture became another another little story in and of itself Billy asks that you or says you have one of the great speaking voices of all time which we've been enjoying tonight that's absolutely right what speakers actors I'm assuming have you been inspired by oh well for a long time British actors were known for their voices and they cultivated their voices there were no microphones it it kind of saddens me now that I know it's happened a long time ago that every theater in Broadway is miked and it's happened now in the West End of London my son is playing in one of the acting right now in one of the smallest beautiful little theatres in the West End and they're miked and they say well audiences now expect to hear sound of a different quality but they're not really hearing the human voice and it feels when I know I'm being miked well not now of course but you feel that you don't have the control over what the audience here in the way that you want to have it what was the question Oh was it what speakers have inspired you oh yeah Muslims voices well at the beginning of course it would have been John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier and Alec Guinness and then after that the next one that came along was the great Paul Scofield not widely known in the United States maybe for one movie for all seasons man for all seasons thank you a quiz show who's great in quiz show too I mean yes he was great yeah well yeah but he had an extraordinary voice and I don't know what happened people used to make fun of my voice once upon a time I mean yeah other actors in the and I shared a dressing room with five other actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company we'll look way down the pecking order and and they used to love saying my lines in my voice allegedly my voice was kind of a little discouraging and would be made fun of in that way but well you know I'm laughing on the other side of my face but and this is what Hugh and I worked on in Logan the the the tonality the level at which we communicated with another more intimate than it had ever been before more vulnerable more more of the the the inner truth of the character being present vocally well you know speaking of kind of humor and vocals I mean that sort of is a perfect lead-in to a Seth MacFarlane and your work with him and the the vocal work that you've done so much over the last 20 years something I read that I found interesting is that you really love to imitate the Shakespearean actors on the radio when you were a kid after sessile had given you that play you listened to them on the radio and you kind of imitated them I think that's a terrific line to go from there to poop in the emoji ha ha or you know anything any of the other great perform Eric and dad anything you know that you do and and what you kind of get from that because that is such a pleasure for all of us to enjoy it is for me too I've got to thank Seth MacFarlane because he is the one who's had the biggest impact in in in allowing people to see that there is another actor inside Patrick Stewart I always wanted to do comedy and I was never cast in comedy roles even when I played touchstone in as you like it the director had an idea that he was a very sad old man and so they cost me and so Seth played a big part casting me in American Dad and I also have a little recurring role in in Family Guy - I play Susie the baby who is who is too young to speak but she thinks in my voice oh it's brilliant and then and then the next guy to come along was Ricky Gervais yeah Ricky takes a lot of responsibility for this as well because I was in the market in my in Burma GA in London one afternoon picking up some stuff and my phone rang and I said yellow and this voice said Patrick it's oh it's Ricky it's uh it's Ricky's your veins and I said Oh for heaven's sake John will you stop do it I have a friend who's a brilliant and he will call you up and he said oh no no no no Patrick it is Ricky and I'm doing a new series and I just wondered if you'd be interested you caught me up in the market on my phone and do this and I'd seen the office and thought it was genius particularly what he did with that extraordinary obnoxious character and I said yep and he said we haven't got an idea yet we don't know what it would be so if you'll just be patient and let us work something out you know we'll get some ideas to you in a couple of days and of course what they came up with was this this delightful Patrick Stewart that nobody had ever seen their obsession in watching women's cars fall off that's right we have a question from from it looks like Gable but I'm gonna say it's Gabby if it's gable if the Clark Gable please let us know but I think it's it's Gabby and it says audition advice for any for an upcoming actor something that would really help in making the best out of those five minutes in a room okay the first the first absolutely vital thing that you have to remember when you're going into an audition whoever you are however whatever age you are is and I speak as somebody who has auditioned actors because I've directed I directed six episodes of next generation undone little bits of theater work you must remember that all the people sitting behind that table want you to be the best thing that's ever walked through that door they want you to be great you there already on your side they want to be blown away by what you do so cast aside the timidity the unease the fear the insecurity all those things that can wipe you out in an audition situation you will never have as great an audience as you have in an audition because they want you to be brilliant and the next thing is which is linked to that is you must be fearless take risks be dangerous if you have to be because when actors dig into that boldness and bravery which we all possess and we can all let loose in different ways then interesting unusual fascinating even things can happen and that's when someone will say that's who we want I love what a terrific tip they did they want you to be great that's true yes yes and it wasn't until I was sitting behind the table that I realize that and it's so simple please like the next person come into the room one that I want it's great Oh Cheryl asks I'm about to embark upon my first Lady Macbeth in Verdi's opera and would appreciate any insight you can provide on how to approach the dynamics of the couples effect on one another how fantastic how amazing it's you Oh congratulations Oh a wonderful now I've only ever seen the Opera once and it was a long long long time ago it's my opinion that if you're playing Macbeth you have to hand the first act of Macbeth over to the lady because it's her show she is running everything in that first half this guy he's he's perfectly content with where he is he's just won a famous battle the King thinks he's brilliant he's been promoted he's been given another title everything is going so well for him but not well enough for her she wants more and that's what drives the relationship and the play also it was my own personal opinion that if when I did it that Macbeth is crazily in love with her absolutely head-over-heels besotted with her so if you'd like to send your Macbeth around to me I'll have a word with him he's he's a very lucky man and and therefore her ambition which he increasingly taps into and what he does initially he's doing it for her he's doing it because she wants it what does she say when you just do it then you were a man he wants to be a man for her and I deliberately when I did it with wonderful English director Rupert Goold I said to him there's only one thing I need from you I need you to cast the youngest Lady Macbeth you can find I wanted to be generations away from me she's at the beginning of her life and her career this is not a tired old relation ship III said if you want to use that nasty phrase she is really a trophy bride he's got this fabulous beautiful woman who is his partner for life and and that might in some way help to give a special tension that people would understand but within that relationship and he is driven by her and is a reluctant monster but the experience of casting himself in as a different kind of person begins to feel better and better and better and it takes over and as it it's a wonderfully constructed play as this spinning wheel begins to take over Macbeth and begins to run faster and louder and more and more dangerous in her it begins to diminish why that diminution happens is your decision to make entirely but I to me that's the structure she is here and the first time we see as she is totally on top of her game and it gradually unravels until we we see her in the shocking state that she is in in at 4'o how one were you in to do it where and will it be a concert performance or well that's great how wonderful it's your first I will come and when is it January yeah and what will the weather be like [Applause] as I'm sure it will be beautiful well III think I'm not in the United States after the new year but have fun and play brave be brave that's the important thing there's nothing to fear I don't know what you guys I could sit here about the next six hours and less listen to Patrick talk about the dynamics between all these Shakespeare characters it's phenomenal but we're gonna go with one last question coming from Dan and he says with all that you've done in your career Patrick there's something you're still yearning to do can be a play or movie TV or maybe something unrelated to the entertainment industry like Mount Everest run for Parliament anything like that anything you're yearning to do um I I have a feeling that somewhere out there it may not exist yet there is a movie script that might one day land up on my well they don't land on your doorstep anymore do they I have a policy about that I hate reading off a screen if I think it's gonna be a script that won't interest me I will read it off the screen if I think it's looking really good I immediately go to my printer and I print it up and I have pages in my head because then it feels somehow more real I can believe in it then yeah that great I mean I had some wonderful roles wonder I can't [ __ ] and complain about what's happened to me but you know I mean watching Morgan on the plane three days ago in in in Shawshank Redemption what an outstanding performance of so much complexity and richness and humor and sadness and at the particularly at the end of the movie and when he walks along that be Shh at the end of the movie it's overwhelming so I tell myself you know there is one of Morgan's roles out there that maybe could make its way in my direction and I hope that I can go on dealing with life theater for as long as possible it gets harder physically harder and I have been approached about playing King Lear in 20 in 2020 the director said you'll be 80 then it's perfect and I don't know I really really don't know I'm sick I'm actually for the first time in my damned life I'm scared because I think maybe I am no longer physically up for it but I am gonna sit down with Ian over a long dinner one and I am say tell me what was it like and do you think I could live through it myself yeah well as Logan shows there are just amazing avenues and amazing things all coming around ladies and gentlemen Sir Patrick Stewart this is so much

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 50,435

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, Actors, PATRICK STEWART, Blunt Talk, Green Room, Logan, Charles Xavier, X-Men, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek, The Next Generation, Olivier Award, Q&A, Retrospective, Interview

Id: PGNYhitem2w

Length: 81min 51sec (4911 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 02 2017