Patrick Stewart Boldly Goes There

When “Star Trek: The Next Generation” premièred, in 1987, a newspaper referred to its leading man as an “unknown British Shakespearean actor.” Patrick Stewart was already forty-seven and had spent fourteen years as a full-time member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. But he had known nothing like the fame that playing Jean-Luc Picard—captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise and model of enlightened masculinity—would soon bring him. When he showed up on set the next day, a castmate had taped a sign on his trailer door that read “BEWARE: UNKNOWN BRITISH SHAKESPEAREAN ACTOR.”