What’s the first thing you think of when you picture Patrick Stewart? You can say Poop from The Emoji Movie all you want but we all know you immediately saw his bald head. Like Yul Brynner, Telly Savalas and Bruce Willis, the cueball look is one of Patrick Stewart’s trademarks. As it turns out, the 83-year-old actor has been perfecting it since he was a teenager.
Patrick Stewart opened up about his premature baldness in his new book, “Making It So: A Memoir”, available from Simon & Schuster. “By the age of nineteen, I was as bald on top as I am now.” But Stewart remained hopeful – at least where his career was concerned. “What I cared about, though, was dating. Attractive young women, I assumed, were not going to want to go out with a young bald guy–not like what’s become socially acceptable, even desirable, in recent years.” Stewart said he even tried the comb-over look, which we all know is far worse than being bald…
Outside of the dating scene, Patrick Stewart did recognize that his chrome dome could give him a slight edge in the business. “As I reconciled myself to my fate–or is it pate?–I realized that I had been given a strategic advantage…I was a wigmaker’s ideal…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.’”
Patrick Stewart has been portraying his trademark character – Jean-Luc Picard – in the Star Trek franchise since the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, getting his own series, the aptly titled Star Trek: Picard, in 2020. But he’s not ready to be done with the character just yet, saying he wants his own Picard movie. Speaking of the franchise, we have to ask: Who wore it best in Nemesis, Stewart or Tom Hardy?
When you think of bald actors, who first comes to mind? Is it Patrick Stewart or does someone from a different generation pop up? Give us your favorite Hollywood baldy below!