Sir Patrick Stewart: How his hometown of Mirfield helped to provide the ideal springboard for a life on the stage

The star of stage and screen, widely regarded as one the country’s greatest actors, always spoke with affection of his home town of Mirfield, and expressed his gratitude to the community in which he grew up.

Sir Patrick, internationally famous for his role as Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and later in the X-Men film franchise, said it provided him with the ideal springboard for a life on the stage.

In an interview with the Dewsbury Reporter some years ago, he said nobody thought you were weird or peculiar if you stood up and sang, recited, acted or played an instrument. It was quite normal.

Sir Patrick grew up surrounded by amateur dramatics and watching his mother taking part in productions at Old Bank Methodist Church.

All the schools and chapels had their own drama groups and he worked with most of them at one time or another.

His first venture on stage was the Mirfield Pageant, held at the Community of the Resurrection when he was just nine years old.

Encouraged by his headmaster at Mirfield Secondary Modern School, Cecil Dormand, Sir Patrick’s love of acting grew and he felt the years he spent at the school were exactly what he needed.

He said he was not an academic and had struggled, something he was unhappy about, but there were other areas open to him which may not have existed had he gone to grammar school.

When he left school at the age of 15, he landed a job as a junior reporter on the Dewsbury Reporter covering the Mirfield district.

When he returned to Mirfield around 25 years ago to help raise money for a performing arts centre at his old school, now Mirfield Free Grammar, he was interviewed about his early years working at the Reporter.

He said: “I covered all the churches and chapels and the working men’s clubs, and when someone died I went and talked to the bereaved.

“For a 15-year-old this was a growing experience.”

While working at the Reporter he was also rehearsing every evening with local drama groups, always pretending to be somewhere else.

He said: “I spent so much time getting people at the office to deputise for me or cover for me. It eventually led to a showdown with the editor, Henry Wilson.

“His ultimatum was: ‘You either devote yourself to being a professional newspaper reporter or you get off this newspaper.’

“I went upstairs, packed my typewriter and left.

“I went home and told my parents that I’d left to become an actor. My father said: ‘Well, in the meantime you’ve got to get a job.’”

Sir Patrick got one at Hudson’s Furniture Store in the Kingsway Arcade in Dewsbury as a salesman.

He said afterwards he was a much better furniture salesman than he ever was a journalist.

But he would not be selling furniture long. At the age of 18, after just one audition and interview, he won a county major scholarship from the West Riding Education Authority and was accepted at Bristol Old Victoria School.

“That was unprecedented,” he recalled. “They only used to give them to students with the very highest qualifications and I had zero. I never took any exams.”

At the age of 26, Sir Patrick joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and subsequently the National, and was regularly employed there.

While touring America with the RSC at the age of 50, he was discovered by one of the original producers of the popular American TV science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He went on to complete seven years as Captain Jean-Luc Picard before leaving in 1994.

Sir Patrick has appeared in many film roles and TV series but he was always particularly proud of Star Trek.

Throughout his distinguished career, Sir Patrick never forgot his friends in Mirfield and Dewsbury, especially his old teacher, Cecil.

It was Cecil who had first encouraged him to act out Shakespeare’s works in the classroom, and in 1952 he got him into a special West Riding of Yorkshire Council Drama Course at Calder High School.

It was much later in his career that Sir Patrick discovered that it was Cecil who had paid for the courses.

“I never realised my parents could not have covered the expenses. I have only just understood where that money came from,” Sir Patrick said.

Cecil’s kind gesture would give a young man from Mirfield the chance of a lifetime.

With thanks to our Dewsbury Reporter nostalgia writer, Margaret Watson, for her contributions to this article.