2023 non-fiction, autobiography. Patrick Stewart recounts his
life story, from childhood and early years as an aspiring actor to
success and wide acclaim.
I should say first that I read this as an audiobook, narrated by
Stewart himself, because the man has a splendid voice; I should have
been happy to listen to his narration of something far less
interesting..
But this is interesting, if necessarily bitty; I found particularly
fascinating the few sections which touched on Stewart's acting
technique, not just the stuff he seems to find most impressive (of
finding the bit of himself that resonates with the part he's playing)
but where he builds something entirely synthetic on top of that
foundation and then comes to inhabit it. (While being aware of the
risks: "if you keep saying 'I love you' to someone in a play, you can
drift into believing the sentiment to be true, which makes the
performance more convincing but the personal ramifications more
dangerous". Which seems to have been a consideration in the failures
of his first two marriages.)
It's about two-thirds of the way through the book before we get to
Star Trek: The Next Generation, and after that things move quite
quickly over the X-Men films and later work. It seems clear to me,
very much as an outsider to this sort of thing, that after TNG
Stewart was a Name whom people invited to appear in their plays and
films, rather than someone who had to apply for parts and go to
auditions.
It all feels a little sanitised for public consumption at times, with
almost everyone presented as being a wonderful person, but I still
enjoyed it, particularly for the early life and acting aspirations
before Stewart's career really took off.