Star icon and professional actor, Sir Patrick Stewart, reveals all on the subject of male pattern baldness, during an interview with Parkinson. Losing his hair when just 19 and petrified by future relationship and career problems, Patrick discusses the challenges he faced during his early adulthood.
From the moment he accepted it, he was born as a new being.
Transcript
Q: “What about when they held baldness against you?”
A: “That came up at the very first press conference, a reporter asked gene Roddenberry, “look, it doesn’t make any sense, you’ve got a bald actor playing this part, surely by the 21st century they will have a cure for male pattern baldness.”
And Gene Roddenberry said, “no, by the 21st century, no one will care.”
This was one of the best things that’s been said about men like me.”
Q: “You’re fashionable now aren’t you?”
A: “Yeah, and it was nice for a while while I saw all of these shaved heads, but it began to irritate me frankly. You know when somebody has a magnificent head of hair and honestly, when I was 19, I would have loved to have had.
And they shaved it all off and I feel like somehow they were infringing on my territory.”
Q: “Was that when you lost your hair, at 19?”
A: “Yes, 19, it all happened in the space of a year, I thought everything was over, especially one aspect of my life – ladies.
Finished! No-one is going to want me. It actually didn’t end up that way, but I felt like I was inhibited by it. I would have been bolder in my relationships with young women than I was, and it was probably all for the best.”
Q: “You had a flap didn’t you, the old ‘Bobby Charlton’?”
A: “Yes, I did. I wore hats all the time, caps, especially if it was windy. That was always so silly about Bobby wasn’t it, has had the worst possible job for it.
Shall I tell you how I lost it?
There was a man who was at drama school with me, Hungarian, he was older than the rest of us, he ran his own theatre in Budapest which came out in 56.
He was a man of strong personality and a good loyal friend to me. He was also a judo black-belt, he was very short and very powerful. He and his wife invited me for lunch one day, and we had lunch which was very nice with a bottle of wine.
The two of them got to the end of their lunch and I thought they were going to make a coffee or something, then all of a sudden I was grabbed from behind by George, this big powerful man, and I thought he was playing some kind of game, so I was laughing and joking but then his wife appeared in front of me with a pair of scissors and I knew in an instant what she was going to do, and I began to scream and shout, and now it was serious. I was fighting to keep my appearance, then she lifted my hair and cut it all off.
Then George came around, knelt down in front of me and said, now you be yourself – no more hiding!
And he was right because I used to walk constantly embarrassed, I couldn’t stand-up properly. It was not only inhibiting as a person, but it was hopeless if you was an actor, of course.”
Q: “So you had to wear a Toupée did you?”
A: “I did yes, I never wore one socially, but I used to wear one when I went for job interviews. The one occasion where it rebounded on me was when I got an audition for the national theatre for Laurence Olivier, and I went down to their set-up.
I wore the toupee to the audition which looked really good, actually entirely natural. I went in and did my first piece with the toupee. He was sitting there right infront of me, it was a nerve wracking experience and I eventually unclipped the hair piece for the second set, and immediately I realised I didn’t have his entire attention, he was looking down at the floor, directly at the toupee. When I finished, he said “do it again”, and I said, you want me to do one of the pieces again? He said “no, put your toupee back on and take it back off again.”
So I did, and he said “marvellous, that’s marvellous”. And I swear, it was the only thing about my audition that he remembered.
Those days are now past, and I can relish what I have.”
