MAKING IT SO

A charming memoir of a long life onstage and onscreen.

Before Stewart (b. 1940) captained a starship on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was a fixture on the London stage. Before he was an acclaimed Shakespearean actor, he was a struggling drama student, and before that a working-class child of Yorkshire. He became a voracious reader to escape an unhappy childhood, and, he writes, “the stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time.” He skipped the equivalent of high school because he couldn’t afford the uniform, but, placed in a less traditional school, he fell into acting classes, followed by apprenticeships, during which one adviser told him that he would one day be a famed character actor—in 20 years’ time. Those two decades passed, and Stewart was taking roles in theatrical productions and films such as David Lynch’s Dune, where he admits to a faux pas with another Yorkshireman: Sting, whose band The Police he’d never heard of. Indeed, part of Stewart’s appeal is his admission that, while grave and commanding behind the persona, he scarcely paid attention to pop-culture phenomena such as the Beatles, even though he became friends with Paul McCartney (who once exclaimed, over drinks with Stewart and a bandmate, “Sir Ringo. Sir Patrick. Sir Paul. Hey—we’ve got the Knights of the bloody Round Table!”). Funny and self-effacing, Stewart is gracious as he describes the talented players—Vivien Leigh, Helen Mirren, Malcolm McDowell, and yes, the cast of Star Trek—he’s worked with. One wants only for more notes on how an actor’s work proceeds, for Stewart is a master, even if a humble one.

A pleasure through and through—and you don’t even have to be a Trekkie.