Patrick Stewart admits he tried loads of schemes to stop him going bald

04 October 2023 , 18:34

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'The more hair I lost, the more attention I paid to the clinic', Sir Patrick Stewart recalls (Image: Getty Images)

Star Trek: The Next Generation icon Sir Patrick Stewart has admitted he tried a raft of hair-brained schemes to stop him going bald.

The English actor is now famous for his roles such as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the hit sci-fi series and Professor Charles Xavier on the X-Men movies. But he confessed that he feared for his acting career when he started losing his hair as a teenager attending the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School – and went to desperate lengths to try and prevent it.

Sir Patrick, 83, revealed: “I decided, despite the fact that my scholarship was very generous, that I needed to make some extra money. Why? Because I was rapidly losing my hair, and I wanted to be able to pay for treatment at a hair clinic in Bristol. I had grown up with thick, dark, wavy hair, but in my first year of drama school, when I was 17, it started to thin out at an accelerated rate.

Sir Patrick Stewart began losing his hair at a young age (The Late Late Show with James Corden/Youtube)

“"Every day as I walked from my digs to the school, I noticed this place that had in its windows before and after photos of balding men restored to their virile, pompadoured former selves. The more hair I lost, the more attention I paid to the clinic. Finally, one day, I screwed up the courage to walk in and have a chat with the people inside. They told me what the treatment would cost. That’s when I realised I needed more cash in my pocket.”

Sir Patrick took on some work in construction during his Easter holiday to fund his hair-loss reversal bid – but they fell flat. “The clinic treatments in Bristol that I’d invested my hard-earned bricklayer money into achieved nothing," he said.

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“I must have had three or four sessions, which involved the placing of electrode patches on my scalp, some massaging by hand, and the application of various creams. But it was hopeless. By the age of 19, I was as bald on top as I am now. As I reconciled myself to my fate – or is it pate? – I realised that I had been given a strategic advantage.

“Being bald, I was a wigmaker’s ideal, a tabula rasa for all manner of hairstyle experiments. And I knew that I was not bound for instant stardom in the West End or on Broadway; I would be working in British repertory theatre, where budgets were limited. It became my custom to audition wearing a delicate little hairpiece – with fake hair, less is more – and then remove it for the director. “’See what you’ve got?’ I said. ‘You have a young actor in his early twenties. But you’ve got a character actor as well. Two actors for the price of one.’

But Sir Patrick said his lack of hair also came in handy on the Star Trek set – to help a colleague with her lines. The show famously features the opening phrase ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before!’

Sir Patrick said: “Diana Muldaur came aboard as the Enterprise’s new chief medical officer, Dr Katherine Pulaski. Our one memorable moment came on a day when Diana was assigned a rather complex speech to deliver to Picard. She was given only a couple of hours to learn it.

“We didn’t have teleprompters on The Next Generation, so I kindly offered to tape a printout of her dialogue on my hairless forehead. Diana played the scene without a hitch, grateful to me for serving as her flesh-and-blood teleprompter.

Making It So by Patrick Stewart is out now published by Gallery UK.

Mark Jefferies