tavis: good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with the legendary actor, patrick stewart, the star of strar trek the next generation and the "x-men" series. he's taken on the starring role of "hamlet." the production airs on pbs on april 28. later this year he'll take on the leading road inpowerment th

♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: delighted to have patrick stewart on this program. he's enjoyed success in a wide variety of roles, including, of course, "star trek: the next generation" and the "x-men" series. beginning april 28 right here on pbs, you can catch him in the production of "hamlet." so now, here a sneak preview of "hamlet."

thou art stubborn and heart with strings of steel. be soft the sinnews of a newborn babe. >> now i'll do it! [laughter] >> tune in next week. [laughter] tavis: i was just thinking on the way in here, what makes this stuff relevant hundreds of years later? why are we still turned on and fascinated by this stuff? >> it's the only question, and it's the big question, because there's never been a talent on this scale.

certainly not in the world of dramatic literature, a man who was able, in the words of his contemporary, ben johnson, after he had died, who said "this was not a man for an age, but for all time." and he said that a year or two after shakespeare died. they already knew that this was a voice halves going to go on and on and on, resonating. i spent a big chunk of my life with his words in my mouth, and i never feel as though i'm speaking 400-year-old dialogue. and people don't hear it in that way either. it is a unique and special talent that this one guy we should give thanks for had. tavis: as an actor, what is it about his work that resonates with you that makes you want to do it and feel comfortable delivering it? >> why does a 12-year-old with minimum education and a poor background connect with william shakespeare?

it always felt easy and accessible to me. it was never frightening. and i was initially excited by the sound of the words. when i was 3 or 4, my brother was 18 years older than me and he was in the royal air force. when he came home on leave, he had met somebody who loved music and loved dramatic literature. so my brother would sit by the bed and would read me bedtime stories. they were "macbeth" and "hamlett" and "king lear." i didn't understand a word. or the sounds that they made. it was exotic, and exciting and strange. so when at the age of 12 or 13 i began to speak out loud some of these words, it was always familiar to me. it always meant something to my life. it was never something out there that i had to struggle for. i was able to relate it to how i was living, too, which is what i try to do now when i'm doing this stuff.

tavis: to your point now, when you were just a child, you were relating it, as you said a moment ago, to the way that you i wonder what there is in a contemporary sense for young folk to learn from this material that can be related to the lives that they are living. >> we've got a great instance in this film, which we're going to see in a few days. because the principal character, hamlet, a young man who has lost his father, disconnected from his mother and from his new - his mother's new husband, disconnected from society, feeling outside of it, and confused as to where he should go and what he should do with his life. i think this alone is going to not able to act, and potentially on a path which might lead to his own destruction. and when you have an actor like

david tennant, who already speaks to young people from his work as the young science fiction doctor, dr. who, people will connect with the character and with david. also, david has a way of using this language which makes it sound like spontaneous, everyday language. i know no one is going to struggle with this in any way. pdrataliarre iss in any way. well, that's a little shot in your shoulder. i don't know about you, but it

scared me when i saw it. [laughter] and the first time i was in this play, which was over 40 years ago, the same actor played both roles, and that influenced me into feeling that if ever i got the chance to hear it -- the problem for a director is that if you cast one actor in both roles, you lose a juicy part to offer to another actor. tavis: do you get two checks for that? >> no, sir. if only. tavis: just thought i'd ask. when they ask me to do two roles, i'm going to ask for two checks. >> it doesn't work that way. tavis: doesn't quite work that way, yeah. you were in this 40 years ago, as you said, have you ever played hamlet? >> no. i was never a juvenile, tavis. i was always a character actor. i was a character actor when i was 16. i lost my hair. by the time i was 19, i looked pretty much like this. actually, i looked worse than this when i was 19. i've gradually improved. tavis: i want to ask you about that, but go ahead. finish your thought. >> and now i've forgotten the question, because i suddenly remembered that i have a plaster on the top of my head. it has suddenly come to me, and i feel i need to explain this

plaster. i hit my head getting into a car yesterday. i do it all the time, because i don't have anything to warn me that my head is near a hard surface. you know, like cats' whiskers, they should have something on cars, when you're reversing, to go beep, beep, beep. and i apologize for that. tavis: just so you know, no one had seen that until you mentioned it. >> and now everybody is talking bit. tavis: now everybody's leaning into their h.d. television trying to see the thing on the top of your head. >> i'd like to say i was in a barroom brawl, but i wasn't. tavis: i was asking about whether or not he had ever played hamlet. >> no, because i was never a juvenile, and hamlett is was played by good-looking, cute guys, and i was neither of those things. you know, one of my first jobs as a professional actor when i was 19, i played a 95-year-old that's a lie, i did wear a little makeup. but a few years ago i got to do

one of hamlett's soliloquies in a recycled program, when you're doing little bits of this, and little bits of that, and i thought i could do it. it meant something to me. so i'm ready now. i'm ready to play hamlett. i sometimes think the closest i could get to it is if i directed the play and i could have a sub limbal relationship with the actor who was playing it. tavis: you mentioned your hair, and i want to come back to that, because there's something serious here that i want to pick up on, which is, as you well know, this hair business for men is a billion-dollar industry worldwide. >> oh, you mean saving it? tavis: saving it, putting it back, making it grow, it's a billion-dollar business. when you say you lost your hair at the age of 19, there are two things here. one, how did you navigate past that at 19, number one?

and number two, i don't know that -- i mean, part of what we know about you and love you and makes you instantly recognizable for us is the dome. there's patrick stewart. you're so known by this head. >> well, that's now. but at 19, that wasn't how it was. i thought that a large part of my life had ended. certainly any romantic aspect of my life would be over. who could possibly go for a guy who's 19 and has no hair? the prospects were grim. tavis: does it run in your family, hair loss? >> oh, yeah, yeah. luckily, we've all had half-decent heads, and that's been a compensation of a kind. one of the nicest things that ever happened to me, one horrible, rainy, windy evening, working day ending in london, everybody's hustling down the street to get in the subway, and i walked past a guy and he's got a hat on. and he suddenly calls out my name, and i turn around and he lifts his hat off, and he says,

"thank you, thank you!" so there are compensations. plus, i save hundreds of thousands of dollars in hair dressers and hair preparations, you know? just a scrubbing brush. that's all i need. tavis: i asked that seriously, because i know there are a lot of guys, because of this billion-dollar industry, who struggle with trying to -- andre agassi was on this program a few conversation. >> another role model. tavis: yeah. >> you know, there was a time he had all that. tavis: but in his book he talks about it was a wig. >> it was a wig? tavis: absolutely. >> extensions maybe? tavis: he talks about that in his book, that he was wearing -- he would wear the headband to hold it down, because he always wore the hair with the headband around it. he had not gotten to that point at that age being comfortable with his hair loss. >> does he talk about any moment when he was able to take off the wig? tavis: oh, absolutely.

>> and it was a significant moment. tavis: his wife at the time, brooke shields, to her credit, is the one that talked him into it. >> i'm a big fan. and i admireed him for that. i had a similar moment. i had a comb-over, you know what i mean? when the wind blows, it goes -- tavis: the whole rudy giuliani look. >> exactly. but let's not go there. tavis: but his new wife talked him into it, too. >> it takes a woman. tavis: exactly, it takes a woman. >> in my case it took a hungarian black belt judo player. i had lunch with he and his wife one day. they both left the room and i thought they're going to make coffee, an suddenly he and his wife appeared with a pair of scissors, and i knew exactly what she was going to do, and i began to yell and scream. but he was so strong, i couldn't move. he had me pinned. and she lifted up my hair, and it all went. and i was screaming and howling

at them. and then he came around. he never let go of me. and he knelt in front of me and i said, "now be yourself. no more hiding." tavis: hmm. >> you've fallen silent, tavis. tavis: you got me with that. that was -- >> i wonder if andre said anything like that about hiding, because that's what you do. tavis: he talks about it in the book. beyond the hair thing, though, i wonder if you can speak to me about this. that seems to be good advice for all of us, those of us who have a full head of hair, about how we journey to a place where we are comfortable being ourselves. tell me about that journey for you. >> for me it came through the stage. i certainly wasn't comfortable being myself as a child or in the environment i was in. i'm on record. so this is nothing new as saying

my home life was difficult. there was danger in my home life. there was danger at school. when i was 12 and my english teacher put me on the stage, i found that i was on the safest place i had ever been. nothing bad could happen to me on that stage. i didn't mind the bright lights. i didn't mind the people sitting out there. i never have. and the main thing was that i could become someone else in a different time and in a different place, and that shifting over into another person helped me to feel comfortable about myself. so when i'm on stage, when i'm working, if i'm doing what you've just seen here, i now feel most myself, because acting became for me the only means i had of communicating who i was. so although i'm playing king claudius, king of denmark, actually, no, what you're looking at there is patrick

stewart being himself. does that make sense? tavis: it makes sense. let me challenge you on this, though, because i don't want people to misread it. i see the value in that. but the flip side is tomb times we wear the mask and we -- too many times we wear the mask, and hiding behind another character keeps us from dealing with who we really are. you'll not saying you're doing that, but i want you to speak on that. >> the mask is what i wore when i performed. it was putting on a disguise, of becoming someone else. then, luckily thanks to the influence of clever people and people who cared about me, i was able to take off the masks, able to throw away the disguises and first and foremost, primarily to be myself. because i saw a shot over your shoulder of me as mack beth, a bad man, mass murderer, cruel, child killer.

the fact is, although i have never done any of those things, the potential for that lies inside me. so when i play that character, i find that potential in me. so it is as if these things might have happened or might have become patrick stewart. so it's always an expression of myself and the actors i most admired in my life. you take jack nicholson. i know it's true. i met him once. nice guy. but if you want to know about jack nicholson, you'll start with his first movie, "easy rider," go to "five easy pieces" watch his movies, and that's how you know about jack nicholson. all these variety of characters, but it is the man inside that speaks through the work that he does, and that has always been, for me, the kinds of acting that most excited and interested me. i didn't know in the beginning. i didn't know that i was attracted to the man inside the

performance. >> you're submerging so deeply and i'm trying to stay with you. the deeper you negotiation i'm trying to submerge -- go, i'm trying to submerge with you. now i want to go back and talk about something else, and that is when you play these characters, macbeth you were speaking about, what macbeth did, patrick stewart is capable of doing. and yet, there are people watching right now and i've had these conversations countless times in my life where someone goes off the range and does something crazy or strange or evil or illegal, immoral, unethical, and people are so quick to say i could never do that. and i learned years ago to stop saying what i could never do, because i firmly believe now as an adult that you don't know what you will do until you are caught in said situation. so when you say to me that, you know, i'm channeling mcbeth these things, you got to tell me

more about this. >> actors have a thing called sense memory, and that means that no experience is ever wasted on us. but it can make us sometimes uncomfortable people to be with, because there is always an monitoring an experience. experience. monitoring what's happening, watching, observing and storing experience. you're saying to yourself, oh, that's what it feels like when all of a sudden i think i'm going to be mugged in the street and i feel threatened. that's what it feels like. store this away, remember it, it's important. we do that all the time. it builds up this bank balance authentic. it belongs to us.

now, all right, i don't know what it's like to cut a child's throat. happens in "macbeth." but i have to imaginetively put myself into that place, so maybe i can find some parallel, i don't know. you have imaginetively process an experience until you can find a connection. and that's why the work that the actors do in private, alone in a room, when you put yourself into those situations, imaginetively and let them become you. once you've done that, you can then be there and you can tap into that every single time. tavis: not that other actors don't in this town -- and you and i have just met for the first time a few minutes ago -- but i get the sense from this conversation that you take this craft very seriously, very

seriously. >> it's my life. i don't know what i would do. i don't know what i would do if i couldn't act. tavis: hmm. >> it is really my sole means of pure self-expression. i can't paint, i can't play, you know, i'd never make a politician. tavis: that must mean you're an honest guy. [laughter] >> oh, that's a low shot. tavis: that was a low shot, wasn't it? >> yes. tavis: you must be too honest for that, or a truth-teller, one of the two. >> i'm very active in politics in the u.k. i always have been all my life. my first act of civil disobedience was when i was 5 years old, at the first post-war election, and my father, who was a trades unionist and a had given me a placard.

and i was walking up and down paling"ly was our labor our candidate. and a policeman told me to move along and i said no, because that's my father over there with the other placard. [laughter] so politics plays a big part in my life, and i do find those who are involved in it, who have the courage and the bravery to take on the business of politics fascinating people. tavis: i don't want to color this question deliberately. but when i say "star trek" to patrick stewart, you think what? >> oh, laughter largely. tavis: laughter? wow. you got me on that one. >> a few weeks ago i came into l.a. and it just so happened that every one of the principal cast members of "next generation" was in town.

and i had something to celebrate. so i got everyone together and we sat down for dinner, all of us. and some brought their wives and partners with them. and my memory of that evening, apart from good food and wine, was laughter. and it remains the dominant sense memory of those days on the set of the enterprise was laughing, sometimes uncontrollably. directors would go on their knees. i've seen it happen, and they'd say, please, guys, please, guys, say the lines seriously once. and we said, hey, roll the camera, we'll do it seriously. they'd roll the camera and we would fool around. i'm painting a grossly exaggerated picture of what life was like, because we worked very hard and very seriously, annal i'm really proud of that series. tavis: and yet, you obviously have an affinity for the stage. >> one person said it better than me. ingmar bergman, the grade

swedish director, who is responsible for some of the great films of 209th century, was also a theater director and ran his own company. and he was asked this question, and he said, "i love cinema. but the theater is my life." nothing to be done. tavis: i like that. i should give him his proper respects, or his props. sir patrick stewart can be -- that was pretty cool, huh? >> you said it beautifully. tavis: not my saying it, but being sir patrick stewart is pretty cool. >> oh, i think it might just be the coolest thing that i've ever known. [laughter] and it's very recent. tavis: yeah. >> you know, when i hear somebody use the title, which in around to look and see who they're talking to, because it felt a little uncomfortable. tavis: he didn't expect it or ask for it, but i'll say it again. sir patrick stewart can be seen

here in "hamlett" and "macbeth." i'm honored to speak to you and to meet you. that's our show for tonight. catch me on the weekends on p.r.i. you can access our radio podcast on pbs.org. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. >> there is no shuffling. there the action lies in his true nature. and we ourselves compelled to give evidence. what then? what rest? try what repentance can. oh, what can it not? but what can it when one cannot repent? oh, wretched state.

oh, bosom blacker's death, oh limed soul that's struggling to be free. help, angels. make us safe. >> for more information on today's show, visit

♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--