Living as we do, roughly an adult human’s lifespan since the invention of modern celebrity, the daily headlines invariably include the death of someone famous.
asserted
headlines → live → someone
In the last few days alone, we have lost German actor Elke Sommer, American actor Susan Saint James and Star Trek actor Walter Koenig.
asserted
we → lose → Sommer
But fans of Star Trek have taken a double hit; Sir Patrick Stewart, who played the debonair Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has also died.
asserted
who → take → Trek
And while it’s difficult to unpick why one death affects some people more than another, that Picard’s Star Trek was technically a generation younger than Koenig’s seems to tap close to why Stewart’s death is so deeply felt.
asserted
death → ’ → Koenig
In one sense, Stewart’s life is easily captured: a dashing science fiction hero, lent a natural elegance by his perfect British baritone voice.
asserted
life → capture → voice
He ran contrary to Hollywood convention – a bald, foreign replacement for his 1960s counterpart, the blonder, easier-on-the-eye Captain Kirk – but he had natural cinematic magnetism.
asserted
he → run → magnetism
And the camera loved him.
asserted
camera → love → him
Indeed, the depth of his accomplishments on the stage eclipse his television fame, even though the latter will always dominate discussion of his career.
asserted
latter → eclipse → career
And his background - surviving poverty, and a shockingly violent upbringing - gave him an emotional complexity that he could never quite resolve.
uncertain
he → survive → that
Born and raised in Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in England, his father was an army veteran who suffered from PTSD, and returned from combat prone to fits of violence.
asserted
who → bear → violence
The difficulties of his childhood, and his inability to protect his mother, would haunt Stewart in later years.
asserted
difficulties → protect → years
He devoted time, energy and money to domestic violence organisations.
asserted
He → devote → organisations
But resolution for his own feelings would elude him.
asserted
resolution → elude → him
And though he came to the television screen later in his career – he was 47 when he signed on to Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 – he seemed somehow ageless.
asserted
he → come → 1987
“Actors live in a world of make believe,” he told me, in one of our many conversations over the years.
asserted
he → live → years
“We live in a giant nursery where we get to play very expensive games.
asserted
we → live → games
But although they’re games, our objective is to make them appear real and truthful.
asserted
them → ’re → ?
So, ageing in the conventional sense, I don’t think, quite applies to us because our job is becoming other people, taking on another life.
asserted
job → think → life
“There are times for me when ageing, believe me, I know how it feels,” he added.
asserted
he → be → me
“Look at these fingers, I was told by a rheumatologist the other day I have poster boy arthritic hands.
asserted
I → look → hands
I could become the poster boy for arthritis.”
uncertain
I → become → arthritis
We both laughed.
asserted
We → laugh → ?
“But at times, it feels like a role that I’m playing.
asserted
I → feel → that
I first met Patrick Stewart on the set of the 1988 made-for-television adaptation of Moby Dick.
asserted
I → meet → Dick
He was playing Captain Ahab, a man consumed by a destructive obsession with an elusive whale, whose choice brought the safety of his crew, and his self-destruction, into conflict.
asserted
choice → play → conflict
Curiously, like the enduring internal pain of his powerlessness as a child in the face of paternal violence, these were characters whose characteristics he managed to twist into later performances.
asserted
he → endure → performances
Captain Picard would channel Captain Ahab, in a later Star Trek film.
asserted
Picard → channel → film
And Stewart’s powerlessness as a child, and unspoken grief over the loss of his mother, would resurface in sequel series, Picard.
asserted
powerlessness → resurface → series
I was dazzled by him.
asserted
I → dazzle → him
And he, I suspect, was charmed by a journalist whose first questions were not about either Moby Dick or Star Trek, but who went straight to a beloved childhood classic, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980), with Sir Alec Guinness, and Excalibur (1981), John Boorman’s spectacular Arthurian masterpiece, in which Stewart played Guinevere’s father, Leodegrance of Cameliard.
asserted
Stewart → suspect → Cameliard
The Next Generation was a reboot, but its characters, and their storied lives, would build an expanded universe far more complex than their 1960s predecessors.
asserted
characters → build → predecessors
Actor and character aged together like a fine wine, I suggested to him once, and he agreed.
uncertain
he → age → him
“It’s a good analogy, the wine analogy,” he said.
asserted
he → ’ → ?
“It does feel like that.
asserted
It → feel → that
There came a point quite early in the seven years when we were shooting the series when I didn’t have to sit in my trailer and think myself into the role.
asserted
I → come → role
So it became second nature and I didn’t have to examine, necessarily, his background to determine how to play a scene.
asserted
I → become → scene
Of his upbringing, Stewart always seemed both unsentimental and deeply affected.
asserted
Stewart → seem → upbringing
Nor was he ever complacent about either what Hollywood offered him, or what he might achieve in it.
uncertain
he → offer → it
Indeed, he began his career with the lowest of expectation.
asserted
he → begin → expectation
“I think my background and what I’d learned about being a professional actor had prepared me for the fact that there was no promise, there was only possibility,” Stewart told me.
asserted
Stewart → think → me
…and 20 more, not listed.
The Aporia
