Star Trek TNG Fandom Showcase - TNG Actor Spotlight: Sir Patrick Stewart

Star Trek TNG Fandom Showcase - TNG Actor Spotlight: Sir Patrick Stewart

This is one of two Extra Showcase Spotlight entries I've planned (the other deals with Jean-Luc Picard, naturally). The original plan was to release both Spotlights in one extra entry, but the length made me re-consider since I don't want to bore people with endless ramblings. So, here's the first entry, this one is all about the actor behind Jean-Luc Picard - the wonderful and amazing Sir Patrick Stewart.

While most people tend to strongly associate Sir Patrick with either Charles Xavier or Jean-Luc Picard (which is a little unwise since he's not like either of these two at all), I have a somewhat different way of looking at him. I've been a Sir Patrick fan for about 14 years now - I was late to the party, I was 19 when I first 'encountered' him and it took me a while to become interested - and I run various unofficial pages about him, among them the Sir Patrick community here on Imzy and my Sir Patrick Tumblr & Twitter. Almost my entire fannish life consists of him and his career: I collect everything that has to do with him, I have almost 60,000 pictures and all movies/TV appearances that are somehow available, and so on and so on. I'm basically a walking encyclopedia when it comes to Sir Patrick, and I don't really have any regrets about that because he deserves all the love in the world.

Now, enough of that.

At this point I'd love to give an overview of Sir Patrick's career, but this would honestly get WAY too long, even for a Spotlight entry.

I'd also love to list my favorite five characters in detail, but this would also be way too long (my Sir Patrick speeches are FEARED), so I shall just briefly mention my all time favorite Sir Patrick character, who also stars in my all-time favorite Sir Patrick series. (Great coincidence, this!)

This is Lucius Aelius Sejanus from the series "I Claudius". Sejanus is ruthless, sneaky and doesn't mind leaving a trail of bodies behind him in order to achieve his goals. Sir Patrick plays him perfectly, and all that despite (or because of?) the fact that he really hated Sejanus as a character. (Because, well, the guy apparently wasn't a very pleasant fellow, but then, one has to be careful with assumptions like this one, Roman history isn't very reliable sometimes with its various contradicting sources and whatnot.)

As I said above, "I Claudius" is my favorite Sir Patrick series. It's not completely obscure/unknown, it does have a bit of a cult following, but I realize it isn't anything mainstream, so, if you've never seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. There's also a great novel it is based on.

And now, before I launch another "Look at how awesome Sejanus is" speech... here's one of my all-time favorite Sir Patrick pictures. It will distract me from Sejanus (I hope).

(This is him in a 1963 production of "The Caretaker".)

There's so much more I'd love to talk about, stuff that has little to do with Sir Patrick's acting career - his work for Refuge, Combat Stress, Amnesty International, his support for the LGBT+ community, his political activism, etc... but this would start yet another bunch of speeches, I'm afraid. You can find out about all this on his Wikipedia Page. It's mostly somewhat accurate.

I do want to say that he's a wonderful human being, though, for various reasons, and that he's amazing, beautiful, adorable, gorgeous - and many other great things that I can't put into words because TOO MUCH PERFECTION.

Oh and here's the latest picture of him that I have - from his Have I Got News For You appearance, this was taken last Thursday (the episode aired last Friday).

If YOU have any Sir Patrick related questions now, though, always feel free to ask! I'll try my best to answer them.