Patrick Stewart is 85 years old: Captain Jean-Luc Picard forever

Sir Patrick Stewart (85), which was beaten by the late Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) in 2010 (1926-2022), began his acting career at the classical theater. For the renowned British Royal Shakespeare Company, the mime, according to media reports, played a large part of his hair at the age of 20, figures such as Macbeth, Othello, Shylock from “The Merchant of Venice” or Marcus Antonius from “Antonius and Cleopatra”.

It is often assumed that this classic training Stewart helped with his undoubtedly most famous role of Captain Jean -Luc Picard from “Spaceship Enterprise – the next century”. Interestingly, the captain of the Enterprise – a Frenchman – played Stewart with a lot of charm, empathy and attitude. Legendary under “Star Trek” fans are the often intimate, clarifying conversations that Picard led in tricky situations with his people in the standby room right next to the bridge of the spaceship.

Clearly: Patrick Stewart’s considered captain with format always kept the team together – and thus even became a model for very earthly team leaders and managers. Another actor hardly seems conceivable in this role.

With science fiction or the “Star Trek” universe, which was already widely branched in the 1980s, consisting of the original series and four movies until 1987, Stewart had no significant points of contact before his time as Jean-Luc Picard. Since he was 19, he played theater professionally in England. At the age of 25 followed the Royal Shakespeare Company, for which he was on stage for 14 years.

He also had minor appearances in well -known films, for example in “Excalibur” (1981) or “Der desertplanet” (1984) before the role of his life was waiting for him. He hired in the science fiction series “Spaceship Enterprise-the next century”, which was to run from 1987 to 1994 and also brought it to four movies, one of them, “Star Trek: Meeting of the Generations”, divided with the old crew around Captain Kirk.

The usual science fiction terminology with terms such as warp drive, phaser and the like Stewart, according to his own statement, was initially difficult. “I still remember how the courage to live when I turned a new script on a new script and saw that there was a speech about dilithium crystals or the like,” he reported in 2001 in an interview with the British BBC.

Nevertheless, as with the incredibly long working days in the US television industry-he became warm after a while, so that his dearest sci-fi term, according to his own statement, became “Space Time Continuum”, ie “space-time continuum”.

What Patrick Stewart and his other colleagues from “Spaceship Enterprise – the next century” did in the mid -1980s should not be underestimated. “I think there was a lot of resistance to the idea of a new ‘Star Trek’ series of those who were fans of the original series. Kirk and Spock, McCoy and the rest had become such legendary characters that they had the feeling that they would somehow be devalued by a new series,” said Stewart himself about the starting point at the time.

But the classically trained Shakespeare actor-which, by the way, jokingly assumed that he would never age-succeeded with his colleagues, which is sought in today’s franchise continuations such as the large other sci-fi narration “Star Wars”: they created a sequel, which means many even more than the original.

Stewart, even to this day, cannot quite understand the immense success of “Spaceship Enterprise – the next century”. “I could never make a rhyme on it. I have several books related to the series, such as ‘The Physics of Star Trek’, ‘Star Trek and Das Business Life’, there are manuals on the command style and countless scientific treatises that were written about the meaning of ‘The Next Century’. During my time at the series, we had two chairpersons of the USA’s staff on the set of the Enterprise bridge, and Both asked me for permission to sit on the captain’s chair, “Stewart summarized the enormous pop cultural relevance of” spaceship Enterprise – the next century “.

The mime had a second, huge film franchise followed by his best-known role. In the “X-Men” superhero films from 2000 to 2017, he also played a paternal figure with Professor Charles Xavier, who gathered a group of mostly young mutants and outsiders and on course instead of the team of the spaceship Enterprise.

Also in comedy roles – such as a short appearance in “Robin Hood – heroes in tights” (1993) or the self -ironic series “Blunt Talk” (2015-2016) – Stewart shone over the years. He breathed into his best-known figure of the Jean-Luc Picard in the mixed successor series “Star Trek: Picard” again about three seasons-and is also a cast member for the upcoming Avengers film, in which he again embodies Charles Xavier. Sir Patrick Stewart at the age of 85 does not seem to be considered.