The classically trained actor Patrick Stewart, who has played such notable characters as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Xavier, has received a knighthood.
You might think that being a starship captain or a professor is good going, but why settle, when you can grab a knighthood as well? Patrick Stewart, famous for playing Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies, was knighted in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace yesterday.
Sir Patrick, said that it had been an “unlooked-for honor”, but that finding himself amongst the ranks of personal heroes such as Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud was the high point of his career. “The knights of the theater represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”
Sir Patrick – and it’s going to be a long time before typing that stops being exciting – also paid tribute to the English teacher that had first encouraged him to perform, saying that he owed “literally everything” to the man: “Although many people in my life have had great influence on me, without this man none of it would have happened.”
Source: BBC