How West Yorkshire am-dram propelled Sir Patrick Stewart to Star Trek greatness

After more than seven decades on the stage, dozens of Hollywood films and a long-running role in one of TV's most beloved shows, it is easy to think Sir Patrick Stewart was always destined for greatness.

But a new exhibition on the Star Trek icon's life and career explores his humble beginnings in a small West Yorkshire town - and how he was stung by rejection as he sought work as a young actor in the 1950s.

Letters on display at the University of Huddersfield reveal how Sir Patrick - later honoured with a knighthood and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - was rebuffed by a number of repertory theatres after leaving the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

"He got a lot of work, but there was this moment where he was receiving all these no's," said Megan Burford, one of the exhibition's curators, who said Sir Patrick had felt "dejection" at his career's stuttering start.

The son of a textile worker mother and a father who was a regimental sergeant major in the British army, Sir Patrick cut his teeth performing in amateur dramatics in his home town of Mirfield, as well as alongside Brian Blessed in Calder Valley summer theatre workshops.

Sir Patrick's talent as a teenager was clear, according to a local newspaper account - on display at the exhibition - of his last performance before he left for Bristol in 1957 when he was 17.

"As has now come to be expected, he played his part with considerable ease and was clearly audible," wrote the Mirfield Reporter's theatre critic in a lukewarm review of the local drama club's production of Ronald Jeans' comedy Young Wives' Tale.

Despite the initial rejections after leaving theatre school, the work was soon flowing Sir Patrick's way.

He landed his first professional role playing Tom Morgan in Treasure Island at Lincoln's Theatre Royal in 1959 before working at the Sheffield Playhouse for 18 months.

His prolific career has since included a number of starring roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearances on the big screen in films such as X-Men, and his famous depiction of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek.

The exhibition features material donated by Sir Patrick himself, including theatre programmes, scripts, photographs and personal papers which have been collected in the university's archives since 2019.

A director's chair used by Sir Patrick during the filming of a Star Trek episode and models of Jean-Luc Picard are also on display in what Dr Burford said was "a playful exhibition looking at his career starting out in Mirfield through to today".

While Sir Patrick now lives in the US, his links to West Yorkshire have "really stayed important for him," according to the curator.

In 1984, he held the premiere of his one-person stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at Mirfield's parish church to raise money to restore its organ.

The actor later spent nearly a decade as the University of Huddersfield's chancellor and has been president of Huddersfield Town's football academy since 2010.

And his affection for the area where he grew up runs both ways, according Dr Burford, who said locals from Mirfield once put on a bus to watch him in a play in Manchester.

Tickets to see Sir Patrick speak at the university about his new memoir, Making It So, later this month sold out within minutes.

Dr Burford said: "That way in which the local community stayed so interested in and supportive of Patrick's career I think is really lovely."

Sir Patrick Stewart: From Mirfield to the Stars runs until 25 October at the University's Heritage Quay. Entry is free.

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