After a screening of “Logan” at The Malibu Film Society last week, Sir Patrick Stewart (the “Sir” comes from being knighted in his home country of England in 2010) delighted the audience with an interview and Q&A.
Stewart, 77, plays the powerful telepathic mutant Professor X for the seventh and final time in “Logan,” an X-men film starring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Stewart’s character was the father figure of the franchise for the past 17 years, but in “Logan” he plays the role from a very different angle—as an invalid on medication who can no longer control his own powers. He’s being cared for by a weakening Wolverine in a hideout along the Mexican border until a young mutant fugitive shows up.
The critically acclaimed R-rated film was released March 3 and made an impressive $612 million at the box office.
Stewart achieved icon status in the U.S. by playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” from 1987-1994. Prior to that, he’d spent years on stage with England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and regional theaters.
“I had five days to make a decision when I was offered the role of Jean-Luc Picard. I consulted a handful of people in L.A., and they all assured me the new series would be a failure. I was told you cannot revive something so iconic [as the original Star Trek],” he recalled. “On the strength of that, I signed a six-year contract,” he said to audience laughter. It turned into seven years of shooting.
Following Star Trek, Stewart found it difficult to land other acting roles.
“I discovered that while franchises might be, for directors and studios, one of the most attractive words in the English language, it has a downside for actors,” he explained.
As an illustration, Stewart recalled an audition a couple years after Star Trek finished, campaigning for a role in a movie that he really wanted.
“I was so eager to be given a chance,” he said. “But when I finally got in to meet the director, he told me, ‘Oh you’re a really good actor, but why would I want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie?’ It was a bleak reality that came to me then that there is a downside to becoming so associated with one role that it prevents you from moving on.”
Because of the experience after Star Trek, Stewart said he was reluctant when offered work in another franchise—the X-Men—and actually turned down the role. However, he went to lunch with the director, who convinced him to take the part after explaining this would “be a completely different experience with a completely different outcome than Star Trek,” which has turned out to be true.
“The writers devised a complete reassessment of what a superhero movie might be and how to approach it,” Stewart explained. In “Logan,” for example, the two main characters have an eight-minute-long conversation in one scene, and another sitting around a dinner table talking—very atypical for superhero movies.
“’Logan’ director James Mangold was determined we’d get to know these characters as individuals, and that made the project fascinating for both Hugh and myself,” Stewart said. “We had to look at what the physical deterioration of these characters would mean. In my case, it was extreme—he’s ill, he’s old and he’s out of control, vulnerable, weak, angry, potentially violent, and very dangerous because of this condition in his brain.”
Stewart pointed out that in the film, “Wolverine is driving a nasty old limo in order to keep [my character], his boss, in medication. And this is not an unfamiliar story throughout society. There is some violence and special effects, but not many—it was about human beings, and this movie was unlike the [X-Men] movies that had gone before.
“I’ve known and worked with and adored Hugh Jackman for 17 years, and we’ve developed a strong mutual respect,” Stewart said of his longtime co-worker. “When we watched the film together for the first time, at the Berlin Film Festival, the first time it was shown to a paying audience, I found myself profoundly moved by the last 15 minutes, watching Hughes’ story.”
Even after the decades spent working as an actor since 1959, Stewart said, “The thrill of having this job has never diminished. In fact, my fascination with the craft and the process has only increased … I tell people I’ve been typecast all my life, but the type keeps changing.”
