Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart was born in Mirfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 13 July 1940, the son of Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart (1905–1980), a regimental sergeant major in the British Army Parachute Regiment during the Second World War who later worked as a general labourer and postman. He has two older brothers named Geoffrey (born 1925) and Trevor (born 1935). He spent much of his childhood in a poor household in Mirfield, where he experienced domestic violence at the hands of his father. As a result of wartime service during the Dunkirk evacuation, his father suffered from combat fatigue, which is now known as PTSD. Stewart said in 2008, "My father was a very potent individual, a very powerful man, who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode onto 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." Stewart attended Crowlees Junior and Infant School, a Church of England–affiliated school in Mirfield. He later attributed his acting career to his English teacher there, Cecil Dormand, who "put a copy of Shakespeare in [Stewart's] hand" and told him to get up and perform. He entered Mirfield Secondary Modern School in 1951, aged 11, and continued to study drama there. Around the same time, he met and befriended fellow actor Brian Blessed on a drama course in Mytholmroyd. At the age of 15, he left school and increased his participation in local theatre. He supported himself with work as a newspaper reporter and obituary writer for the local newspaper, but quit after one year when his boss gave him an ultimatum to choose acting or journalism. According to one of his brothers, Stewart would attend theatre rehearsals when he was supposed to be in work and then invent the stories he was reporting on, or persuade other reporters to cover for him. Stewart got a job in a furniture store, that not only allowed him to attend rehearsals with little scheduling conflict, but he also found that his thespian talent was applicable, resulting him in becoming productive in sales while practising his acting technique by tailoring his sales pitch for each customer. He also trained in boxing. He has said that acting served as a means of self-expression in his youth. Stewart and Blessed later received grants to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Stewart was the first person who was neither a graduate of Oxford nor Cambridge to receive a grant from West Riding Council.