Arise, Sir Patrick Stewart

By Cheryl Mullin on Jun 2, 10 02:18 PM

Patrick Stewart has honoured his former English teacher for setting him on the path to acting, as he was knighted by the Queen.
The star of stage and screen said without Cecil Dormand encouragement to perform, he would never be where he was today.
Sir Patrick, 69, said: "Because he was the one that put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand, he was the one who told me it was a play and not a dramatic poem, he was the one who said 'now get up on your feet and perform, this is a play, it's life'.

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"He was the one who said when I was leaving the secondary modern 'have you ever thought of doing this as a profession?'.
"He put me in a play with adults, so I owe literally everything to this man."
Although well respected on the stage, the Shakespearean actor shot to fame when he was cast as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.
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Speaking about his time in Star Trek, he said: "We did 178 episodes and then, thinking that's over, the X-Men franchise came along and I did three movies for that.
"What was most satisfying was to return to the UK in 2004 and, after a few months of nervous waiting where nothing happened, to find that I had the potential for a career here again and it's taken off in a way that I've never anticipated."
The actor said his great love was for the theatre, especially Shakespeare, and in recent years he has had roles in a number of classic plays, including Macbeth, Anthony And Cleopatra, The Tempest and Hamlet.
Sir Patrick said: "It's all I ever wanted to do. I thought it would be nice to do television but I never had any ambition to be in films because it was too remote a possibility.
"Then to find that I have been in movies and successful ones too... but theatre is my love."