Credit: Maximilian Bühn
October 29th, 2026 · 8:08pm GMT
Patrick Stewart was going to put everything he had into whatever project he was working on.
Even though he tried his best to make his roles varied across his career, there were so many more avenues to go down when he went outside of his comfort zone and took a chance on something that he wasn’t sure of. And even though there were many roles that became legendary thsanks to him, some of the biggest performances he ever gave were up in the air before he even had the chance to make them legendary.
Then again, every single role that Stewart has ever hd wasn’t something that he phoned in. He had trained to become one of the most lengendary actors of his generation just like the heroes that had come before him, and he wasn’t going to let any role slip away. He was the one that could actually bring some sense of comedic undertones to something as painfully unfunny as The Emoji Movie, and there are no shortage of films in the MCU where he showed everyone how vulnerable he could be as Professor X.
But that wasn’t by accident. He felt that every role was great in its own way, and he wanted to make sure that everyone got the same amount of care and attention. He got the chance to play a lot of different roles, but he didn’t see the difference in what he was working with as Professor X and the kind of iconic performances you’d see in any Tolkien adaptation.
Every one of them was another link in the chain for him, but he was also looking to show everyone what it was like beyond this galaxy in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But when you look at the predicament that he was in, Stewart had some huge shoes to fill when looking through all of the history that the original show started with.
William Shatner’s performance has been taken a myriad of different ways throughout the years, but Stewart was able to have the same amount of seriousness when working as Jean-Luc Picard. It would be so easy for something like this to slip into cheesy territory, but the fact that Stewart actually managed to bring some sense of grace to everything is actually what grounded the role beyond being just another sci-fi show.
But Stewart felt that he had blown his audition before he had even had the chance to film a single episode, saying, “When it first started, I didn’t think that I would survive beyond the pilot. I did not unpack; I didn’t see the point. I thought the producers would come to their senses and realize they’d made a grave error in casting me. I was certain that I’d be on my way back to London… Eventually, it became clear to me that not only wasn’t I going to go away, the series wasn’t going to go away. I stayed, and have relished every moment.”
Further reading: From The Vault
That might sound insane on paper, but that also speaks to the kind of humility that Stewart had throughout every step of his career. He knew that the biggest opportunities were just around the corner, but to think of anyone being in the same spot that he was in during that role would have been unthinkable, especially considering how long the extended series went on for.
And without that door opening, there’s a good chance that so many people wouldn’t have been introduced to some of the biggest roles that he would take on later. Stewart was ready to make an entire new career path out of working on this one role, but it just goes to show you that sometimes a person’s life could be changed in one moment based on the right audition in Hollywood.
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