Dafne Keen and Harriet Walter recall working with Patrick Stewart
Actors Dafne Keen and Harriet Walter shared personal memories of working with Patrick Stewart in The Guardian. They describe him as a warm, playful colleague who never made a child feel small.
British actors Dafne Keen and Harriet Walter have shared memories in The Guardian of working with actor Patrick Stewart, best known for playing Professor X in superhero films. Both accounts describe him as warm, playful and generous with colleagues.
Keen worked with Stewart at the age of 11 on the film Logan. She recalls that he had a knack for making everyone feel included. He had a seemingly endless supply of jokes on set, and when she remarked that the house set lacked only a dog, he began barking and acting like one until she was roaring with laughter. He would spontaneously quote Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and Pinter, and could talk equally easily to children and to professors.
Keen says Stewart noticed her gazing at his Professor X wheelchair and quietly told her that if you pushed the stick hard enough, it went very fast, then invited her to try it. On one of their first days together, after an intense take, he asked her: "Have you ever noticed, no one ever sneezes in films?" They agreed to try to sneak a sneeze into a take. Keen writes that an actor of his stature never made a child feel small or peripheral, and she regards him as her acting professor.
Walter's Michigan memory
Harriet Walter recalls Stewart wearing a team baseball cap to disguise his distinctive head as he moved anonymously through the crowd at an American football match in Michigan. At halftime he stepped onto the podium to conduct the University of Michigan Marching Band in a medley of TV theme tunes. Walter writes that she has never seen anyone so ecstatic.
That same night the two performed together in Antony and Cleopatra. Walter notes that fame came to Stewart relatively late, so he enjoyed it in the best possible way. She says he taught her that the chemistry between the famous couple came more from their minds and verbal sparring than from costumes or scenery.
