Make It So: Sir Patrick Stewart On Surviving Trauma, Staying Engaged & Lessons From The Artist Life

34:18Yeah. Yeah. It really would. But then, you know, as time went by, I discovered that there was an under the covers aspect to Picard as well. And when we came to do the new series Picard, we really examined that because the writers and directors were very interested in uncovering a man that we had seen almost nothing off. There was one scene in one episode when I screamed, I yelled at a woman, and I threw something at a glass-fronted, I don't know, cocktail cabinet or something and shattered it. And this was shocking for people. They'd never seen Jean-Luc Picard like this. But I knew how to do it.

35:12Yeah. It's inside you. It was inside you the whole time. Yeah. And there was a price to pay for that. In rehearsals, I just delved into all of that and put it into the role. By then, I had two divorces, and I was to blame for both of them. I watched the first episode of Picard from season one the other night. And I was really struck by, there's that scene where you're being interviewed and your buttons get pushed. And then you kind of unleash, right? And it reminded me of, it was very similar to the Jack Nicholson Sorkin scene in A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessup, of being provoked just enough to let the lion out.

36:20Basically your version of saying, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. Did you order the code red? You're goddamn right I ordered the code red. Like that speech that you give is very resonant of, it reminded me of that in there. And it's like that there's that latent, not necessarily anger, a little self-righteousness earned through experience. Yeah. The other kind of example of that for me was when you did, when you were Leontes in Winter's Tale, right? Which is kind of a watershed moment and you kind of reckoning with your past. Yes, it was. And it was very challenging when I read the play.

37:06First of all, I'd seen the play and found it interesting, but it didn't appeal to me in the way that so much of Shakespeare did. One day I was in the green room of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I was working there and I'd been made this offer of Leontes in The Winter's Tale. And sitting alone at a table was Dame Peggy Ashcroft, whom I didn't know, but she was a member of the company, but I wasn't in the play she was in. And I said, Dempeg, may I sit by you? And she said, yes, of course. Come on, sit down. And we had a chat. And I said, look, I've got to ask you this. I've been offered Leontes in Winter's Tale.

37:53And I saw her face change straight away. And I said, I don't know what to do about it. Could you give me any help or advice? And she said, turn it down. Don't do it. Don't do it. he's a bad bad man and nobody likes him the audience don't like him because he's vile to everybody there's nobody who's on his side except of course there's one good friend whom he kills and um i i i i said to her thank you you've articulated what i think i was feeling So that's great. And then the director said, well, have you made a decision? And I said, yes, I have. And I'm going to pass. And he said, tell me why. So I did.

38:46And he said, can we meet just one more time and talk? And so we did. and he said, you see, Patrick, the reason why I'm so determined to have you play this character is that you're not going to have to interpret him. He's already inside you. I know that. I don't know how he knew it. Yeah, what do you think he saw that made him say that? I don't know. He's a psychologist also, right? He is, yes. Yes, he is. Ronald Eyre is his name. And yes, he is. Brilliant, brilliant man. And he said, if you do it, I give you my word. I will never leave your side. Not one moment. I will be there. And he was too.

39:43Boy, it was hard. It was really hard. But one thing that came out of it, I'm so grateful for. and I looked at it this morning and adjusted it, there is a photo on my desk of Winter's Tale, of me as Leontes and my dear beloved friend, Bernard Lloyd. We have been talking to him and I've been going crazy in the character. And they were taking photos. It was a photo shoot, but they wanted action. They wanted the real play. and in this photograph he has his hand on my arm and he's leaning towards me and there is so much gentleness in his face so much empathy and sympathy that when I was first shown that photograph I knew it was for all time and it's been on my desk in a frame ever since then because that became the symbol of what kindness and friendship could mean in a relationship, because I had not been too good at that in my adult life.

41:06And then Bernie died, actually, it's probably two years ago now. and I was with him until quite close to his death and he was very stiff and hurting and my wife said, Sonny said, can I just give you a little massage? I think it might help you. He said, yes, okay, okay, and he stretched out and she massaged him for half an hour and then she hugged him and then I hugged him and we left and we got to our car and we burst into tears, both of us. So that picture of him touching my arm with such kindness is part of my daily life. Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, I think what I extracted or took from that story and your experience of doing Winter's Tale was that you have this director who's also a psychologist who identified something in your psyche that needed to come out that would contribute to the performance and make it great and terrifying.

42:22And I know there are stories of people in the audience who felt like we shouldn't even be watching this. It was so intense. Absolutely. But from a psychologist point of view, it's almost ingenious that he, it was a form of therapy for you to connect with that part, to realize that that piece of your dad is inside of you or there's that unhealed pain that resides inside of you from that experience growing up that still required you to reckon with it and look at it. And perhaps that was a piece in the puzzle that led you towards therapy and kind of making peace with this that has on some level healed those wounds.

43:04That's very true. And it was something that I could absorb into my work into my acting and my approach to bringing a role to life. Albee's great play, I think the great American play of the 20th century, I'm sorry, Mr. Miller, he wrote a play called Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And I got to play George, the husband. It's a couple, two couples, a husband and wife who are middle-aged and a young married couple. With a tinge of alcoholism sprinkled in. Oh, Lord, yes. So much liquor in that. Yeah, and I had some experience of that too. but my two broken marriages I realized gave me a profound sense of what had been going on inside me during that time when the marriages were breaking up and that I could absorb them into George.

44:21I have another photograph that sits on my desk. And it is, because it's going to be in the book when the photographs are put into the book, it will be there. Yeah, I've just got the galley here. So I don't even have the final one. It's not out yet. It's quite a collection of photographs. It will surprise people, which is good. I'm looking forward to that. Especially my childhood photographs. um but in in this one i'm playing george and it's a scene when martha his wife actually isn't on the stage um it's a scene in the last act of the play and um i i was and i was wearing a wig thinning hair but some of the hair was danging over my forehead and my head is down and I look so depressed and fearful and I know that that was authentic because I was able to tap into those feelings that I had when I when I was getting my first divorce and we were living apart and I went to bed at night and this is the only time this has ever happened for me.

45:41I was in so much terror that my legs sweated, just my legs, nothing else at all. And I've heard that that can happen, but it was an indication of what was inside me. Well, one of the great joys, including Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is that having to immerse yourself into as someone else can be so rich in lessons and learning and understanding and getting closer to other people as well. Yeah. Well, it breeds empathy. You're literally walking a mile in someone else's shoes. Yes. And it changes your view of humanity, I suspect. Yeah. When I was doing Macbeth, I did it for exactly 365 days, the first and the last performance.

46:38For a whole year, I played that guy. I lived that guy. And it became not good for me. I mean, for one thing, I began drinking only when the show was over. Too much, way too much. And his depressions and ferocity and despair towards the end of the play would begin to envelop me more and more as the evening or matinee days when we'd do it twice wore on. And it became difficult. How do you create healthy boundaries around that so it doesn't seep in? And I guess it sounds like that's been a challenge for you. If you end up drinking a little bit too much and walking around brooding on this character that you're inhabiting.

47:31I've learned, and Sonny, my wife, has helped me with this, that when I've finished a day on the set, it doesn't happen that often with filming, but it can do. But certainly when I come home from playing a stage role, I deliberately let it go. Let it go. I mean, this is the gesture that I use. Shake it out. Now I can go home and have some supper and not be in absolute fucking misery because it's what I was. Well, also, it has to be an insane high to do that every night. And then you're supposed to just go home and go to bed when your hormones are going crazy because you've just done this endurance event, this artistic endurance event, you know, in real time in front of a live audience who then receives you and you're feeling that energy of the crowd and then you're supposed to just go to sleep after that?

48:30Like, I don't know how that works. The last moment - I'm always amazed at Broadway actors who just get up every night or sometimes twice a night and do that for incredibly long stretches. Oh. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I have a limit now on how long I can do a play for, particularly if it's a play that I know is gonna be sucking me in. Yeah. What's interesting is before the podcast, you were sharing about how you just recorded the audio book for this. And you said that was one of, if not the most difficult things that you've done as a performer. No question, most difficult. Compared to being on Broadway every night or 20 hour days on Star Trek.

49:11I've already told you why I'm being myself. That's really hard. I wrote it and I had no intention of reading out loud recording it when I wrote it oh come on of course you're going to read your audio book believe me it came as a shock when my agent called with your voice you think somebody else is going to voice you in your autobiography I don't listen to audio books I've never heard an audio book I've never recorded one before I mean people keep saying you ought to do it you know it can be fun and you know it's interesting no I never wanted to do it And so it was in my contract, and it was only when I got around to reading the contract in detail that I saw that I was also committing to an audio book.

49:59But Simon Schuster, and particularly Christina, the producer that I work with on the audio book, has been fantastic. I can only do about two hours. I've once or twice gotten close to three, and I've once wrapped after an hour because it just destroyed me, wore me out doing it. It's so difficult. I met two actors who said, let's give you a warning. If you've never done an audio book before, it is the hardest work you'll ever do. And I said, but you're sitting down with a microphone a few inches. I've got to be hard, they said. Well, if you do it, you wait and see. I think people would be aghast if you didn't end up voicing the audio book to this.

50:41It would be, it just would not be right. Well, I'm doing it every morning and that's one of the reasons why my voice is a little gravelly because I don't know what it is. It's what I'm putting into the morning's work that I only ever stop recording when I think it's time for my voice to be rested, you know? Well, you sound great. You mentioned friendship a little bit earlier that photograph that's on your desk, which leads me to my curiosity around your friendship with Ian McKellen, which I think we can all agree, this is friend goals for all of us. Like it's such a beautiful relationship that you have with this person.

51:28It motivated me to go on the internet and kind of find pictures of him as a young man, because you describe him as just, There's a mythos around who this person was, even when he was young, many decades ago, that just portrays him as larger than life. And sure enough, I mean, the images of him as a young man are just absolutely striking. Beautiful. Yeah. But he was somebody who was very intimidating to everybody. Somebody everybody knew was gonna be on the rise. And I think there's this idea that the two of you had been friends from the get-go, but that is not the case. No, no, no, no. I first met him at the Royal Shakespeare Company, but we never worked together.

52:14Only some years later, we worked once. We did a Tom Stoppard play called Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, EGBDF. And Ian was in it. And I was very shy of him. What was it about him? It was the way he listened when you talked to him. Because Ian is known as a talker himself. But he is a wonderful listener. And I talked to him about things I'd never talked to another man about before. Yeah. You said that you blame him for turning you into a child again. What does that mean?

53:03um well i i became silly and adventurous and playful and uh because he is you know he's got a great sense of humor and uh and a great sense of irony particularly um and so egbdf was one thing and john wood and ian mckellen were the two leading actors i just simply played a psychiatrist. I should be so lucky. And Ian, I don't know how to... I've tried. I've sat in front of my computer for a long time, sometimes thinking about Ian and the affection that I have for him and what he gave me when we worked together and when I watched him work on stage. And now in our friendship, it's as close to a love affair as I shall ever have with a man.

54:11Yeah. I don't know if you know this, but if you Google Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, one of the first things that pops up is this question, is Ian McKellen married to Patrick Stewart? but there's actually a really funny story behind that. Do you know what I'm referring to? Yeah. So at one point yourself, Ian and Hugh Jackman all appear on the Graham Norton show and Ian announces that he is going to marry you. So there's what he actually meant and there's how that was interpreted. That's right. He was the priest at our wedding and he was, he had been qualified And so far as I know, Sonny and I were only the only couple he married, although he had multiple offers once the word got around that he was.

55:07I have no doubt. Yeah. So he ends up marrying you. I guess you were going to get married in Nevada, but there was a pesky state law around his ministry, his sort of legal. That's right. It was not recognized in Nevada. And so we would go through a mockery of a wedding. So I think as I understood the story, yeah, you were in Lake Tahoe, you were gonna get married on the Nevada side, but he wasn't legally permitted to do that. So you all crossed the border into California and did an impromptu ceremony in a Mexican restaurant. In a Mexican restaurant at 11 o 'clock at night. Yeah, just like a small group of you, right?

55:50Yeah, yeah. Oh, there were five of us. So we had witnesses too. And it was extraordinary. Let's talk about Star Trek. What? Do you remember that part of your life? It's gotta be a blur though. Most of it's gotta be one big blur. Oh, yes. we recorded over um how many seasons chris swan will know seven seasons we did something like 174 episodes uh-huh and there are only a handful of them i remember yeah the rest have just all gone into the melting pot and and but there are some vivid recollections i do have of certain and certain actors that I worked with and what that meant to me. And the fact that I was getting a break in popular TV.

56:55Sure. Yeah, I mean, this was a big deal. You were, I think it was, was it LeVar Burton who put a sign on your door that said something like, beware unknown British Shakespearean actor inside. Like this was your introduction. I mean, you went from being this, you know, just a theater person into the public consciousness very quickly. And the story behind how you got Star Trek, which you go into in detail in the book is super fascinating. I know Ian told you not to do it. He was trying to talk you out of it. Yep, he did. He was the only one who did. He's apologized for that. He has said he was wrong.

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59:12I think it's interesting to try to understand what makes Star Trek such a special idea that has left such an indelible kind of mark on our culture and why it continues to persist and be so popular. I think the strongest thing is that it is a vision of the future and it is a positive, hopeful vision of the future. Oh, yes, dreadful things have happened in Star Trek, But behind Gene Roddenberry's motivation for creating the first series and then coming to work with us was that he wanted to leave behind a sense of positivity and hopefulness and confidence. and it's the one thing that he talked about with me.

1:00:14And actually, what he said was, I had lunch with him. We only had two meals together because we didn't have actually much in common. He played a lot of golf and I don't play any golf at all. Well, the first meeting with him didn't go so well, right? He did not want you for the role. It was a disaster. And he hadn't invited me. It was my encounter with, well, Robert Justman had come to UCLA to see a public lecture, which an actress and myself were illustrating with extracts from plays, Shakespeare plays. And he'd seen it. And he went back to the office the next morning. And he said, we found our captain.

1:01:01And they said, what are you talking about? and Gene Rodman said, oh, well, get him in this morning. Let's have a look at him if you think he's that good. And so I got the phone call at nine o 'clock in the morning and I was in Gene's office at 11 o 'clock that day. And he got out of his chair. There were two other men in the room, including Robert Justman, who was the man who had been to see the play the night before and was blown away by it. Gene stood up and shook my hand. and then we talked for seven or eight minutes and then Gene said, all right, thank you very much for coming to see us and thank you.

1:01:44That's that. Goodbye. And I left kind of relieved actually that I was out of this weird atmosphere. But six months later, I was gasped. Did you have misgivings about being this highbrow, Shakespearean actor and dipping your toes into network television at the time? I didn't know what I was doing. I'd been in TV. I mean, some of it, I, Claudius, the great BBC series based on the two famous novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. I'd been in that. I'd done a series about a policeman, which only lasted one season. And occasionally, little bits of plays would turn up. But it was not a career for me.

1:02:35And I actually wasn't that interested, really. The theater was what I loved. Performance, being on stage night after night after night. And that changed. Yeah, you really came to embrace every aspect of it. Yes. And I love it today. film and television. And I'm worried that I may never get to do it again. I think you're gonna get to do some more. Yeah, I think you got a little more in you. I think when I think about Star Trek, I grew up with the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk, Spock and all of that. And yes, there is a beautiful optimism to it, perhaps not utopian, but optimistic enough, which I think serves as a contrast to most science fiction.

1:03:24But also it's always been a show that has been fearless in terms of grappling with social issues. Like that's always been at the core of what the show is about. It gives you an opportunity through allegory to explore things that are going on in culture currently that we're struggling with. I have to say, and this will sound unkind to maybe those who hear this, working with Gene Roddenberry was not easy. I mean, he never directed an episode. He was the executive producer. Did every big decision had to get run through him as the creator? Absolutely, yes. I was very unconfident. In fact, when I started writing the memoir, I thought, people are really going to want to hear me go on and on and on about Star Trek and maybe X-Men too.

1:04:25And I don't think I want to. That's not the most interesting part of my career. I mean, that is a shocking thing to say because it's assumed, of course, that it is. And I think that throughout that first season, I really didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand television technique. I'd never had a class in television. In my drama school, we didn't do film and TV work at all because, you know, nobody was expected to get it because they were just film actors. And there wasn't that much television either. and then um i uh i was determined that i would do better and i knew even when i first saw it that i the best thing that i was doing in the first season was space the final frontier that i got really good at and why because i copied exactly what bill has said bill shatner bill shatner yes But the thing that's striking is when you're on the bridge, there is a theatricality to that in a very practical sense.

1:05:39It is a stage. There's entrances and exits and you're literally sitting on a throne. Yes. So there is a parallel that I imagine as a stage actor you were able to connect with and tap into. I mean, it's very Elizabethan. You're absolutely right. And as it became more and more like that, I began to feel more and more comfortable. My first film was, it's in the book, was two afternoons or two mornings work in a film starring Rod Steiger. Rod Steiger was one of my childhood heroes. I'd seen um the porn the porn broker I'd seen um uh on the water on the waterfront yes and and absolutely loved them and uh and so he learning that I was um that this was my first ever day in front of a film camera he said what are you doing for lunch and I said I don't know what do you do for lunch on a film set?

1:06:50He said, you go there and you order your lunch and they'll give it to you. Bring it to my trailer. Wow. Rod Steiger is inviting me into his trailer. The man who said, take the job. Take the job. In the back of that car with Rod and... Brando. Brando. Yeah. Marlon Brando. But the real kicker to that story, though, is it not the fact that you shot that scene, you shot a scene in the back of the car with Rod Steiger for this movie. I think you had to shoot him. And they were shooting all of his coverage. And then when they finished that, they said, lunch, and then he threw a fit. Yeah, well, they said, what they actually said was they did do all of Bill's coverage, some of which I was in.

1:07:45and then they said, okay, that's all we need of you, Bill. You can go to lunch now. Right, Rod, you mean. Rod, Rod, Rod, yeah. And we were sitting side by side in the back of this car. I hadn't actually shot him or killed him. No, I didn't get to do that. He said, what about Patrick? And they said, oh, don't worry about that. We'll have somebody read in for you and it'll all be fine. And there was a long silence. And I could feel this heat growing on one side of me. And he said, what the fuck do you think I am? I mean, his voice going up. And then he went for this assistant stage manager and said, you think I'm going to leave him now?

1:08:37He's all done my lines and I'm going to leave him to do his own? and anyway it was and then that was when he said I'm sorry about it he apologized to me and I said no no no no that was fine and he invited me to his trailer and he said the camera photographs thoughts no one had ever said that to me before I mean that's the very heart of the method which he was a pupil. I mean, he studied just like Brando did. So you carrying that onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, that sensibility of the camera can read your thoughts and also a leadership role as the captain sitting in the throne, remembering that Rod Steiger did what he did for this young actor doing his first movie.

1:09:35Like that's a lesson, right? Like this is how you, this is, you know, it's not right. Like, and if you're the lead in a project, the tone is being set by how you comport yourself, right? And understanding that you're now carrying that responsibility. Exactly, and it's one of the reasons why I love playing the leading role. Yeah. Because I feel that I can help to give the other actors the best possible experience they could have. and and i i will always say there are no number one actors we're an ensemble we work together and i do remember um one of the things rod always said rod said to me while on this lunchtime was whoever is talking he's the lead whoever is and that was amazing for an actor who only had half a dozen lines.

1:10:32Yeah, he didn't have to do that. No, he didn't. He was being kind and generous. Oh, boy. And then you ran into him many years later, right? Years later. And I was in New York. No, I was here in Los Angeles and I was, I think, already working on Star Trek. And I went to this restaurant and we were looking around. It was very busy. And there he was, sitting at a table with three other friends. And I said to Sonny, oh my God, my God, there's Rod Steiger over there. And she said, go and say hello, go on. I said, okay, okay. He won't know who the hell I am. It was years ago. So I went over and before I got to the table, he said, Patrick and stood up.

1:11:17And it was one of the best memories of my career. The gift that keeps giving. Yeah, right. Yeah, beautiful. I need to know about the paranormal activity that was happening in your Silver Lake house that you talk about in the book. Oh, yeah. Sounds like you were getting visited by ghosts. Yeah, I bought a house on Moreno Drive in Silver Lake. One evening I came home, the floors were staggered down a steep hillside. And so the door from the garage led straight into the master bedroom. and one night I locked up the car, pulled down the door, opened the bedroom door and the smell of cooking was intense and I thought, I must have left the oven on last night or why didn't I smell it?

1:12:08So I hurried downstairs, nothing, just the smell of cooking in the air and nothing else at all. And then it took on from there, footsteps on the stairs, voices in rooms where there was nobody. I came home one day, my son had been staying with me, he went to school here. And I got home and he said, oh, thank God you're home. And I said, why? Is something wrong? He said, let me show you. And we went into my sitting room where I had a lot of bookshelves and all the books were thrown across, were scattered across the floor. And I said, what have you been doing? He said, I didn't do anything. I was watching television and suddenly all these books were thrown into the middle of the floor.

1:12:59Pardon? No earthquake. No earthquake. No. And there was a place in the hallway, which I used to go through the house, starting on the ground floor and then work through my house, turning lights off and all that. because my television room was right on the ground floor, on the lowest deck of the house. And when I got to the middle floor, which was the kitchen, the living room, and the dining room and so forth, I walked to the foot of the stairs. And just before I reached the stairs, I always walked through this icy zone. It was just the temperature instantly plummeted. And I got to the foot, one foot on the step, and it was gone.

1:13:44I rented the house when after three years I moved somewhere else and I got a family moved into it and they were lovely people and one day they called me to ask about I don't know there was a problem with a washing machine or something that had gone wrong and so we had a little chat and then just as she was about to hang up she said oh by the way Patrick there was something I wanted to ask you you didn't tell us everything that came with your house. They were having it worse than I was. And the child, exactly on this spot where I used to feel the temperature plummet, saw a man standing there. And I found out about him.

1:14:30I became very close to my neighbors next door. They'd lived there for decades. And they said, yes, yes. Well, that was a man who died in a car accident, actually. Very violent car accident. Who had lived in that house? Yes. What do you make of all this? Well, that's only one experience that I've had. I've been in other places when I've just had, And I mean, Sonny and I were looking for a house in England. And we went into one and it was empty. All the furniture had been taken out, but it was very, very old. 15th, 16th century. And we were going along. There was a long corridor in the upstairs floor.

1:15:19And there were doors off the corridor into the rooms. And I went into one room. and as I got into the middle of the room, I felt hands around my throat and I cried out, help, help. And Sonny came and ran into the room and got hold of me and dragged me out. I was being strangled in that room. Oh my God. So it's, and it's, oh, the first time I saw it, I was 12 years old in a neighbor's house. So this is a recurring thing. I think I have some kind of openness, some kind of sensitivity that maybe it's history. I don't know. But I feel that I do hear voices occasionally. And what do you choose to interpret from that?

1:16:21What is your sense of? That I'm tuned in to the afterworld. And that there's no mistake or irony in you being an actor who plays a character who goes and visits with aliens all over the galaxy. I don't know, I don't know, maybe there is. I mean, come on. And then you turn on the TV and there's congressional hearings on UFOs and UAPs. Like there's a convergence happening right now. What is going on, Patrick? There is, it's extraordinary. And things being seen more and more in the sky. I just hope that whatever happens, happens while I'm still here. Yeah. I got to let you go shortly here. But there's two more things I want to touch on quickly.

1:17:04The first thing is you're a bit of an animal welfare advocate. There's a couple squirrels that appear and reappear in this book. You have an incident at a bullfighting match that seems like it was impactful. And I know you do a lot of work with dogs, particularly pit bulls. So where does that sense for animal well-being come from? I had a dog when my father bought me a dog not long after he came out of the war. The dog's name was Rover, and he was a thoroughbred Scottish collie, a Scottish sheepdog. He was black and white, very classical dog. And I love this guy. He was wonderful. And we had him a long, long time and then he had to be taken and put down.

1:18:01He was very ill. But I never forgot that. And when I made contact by this Wags and Warks in Los Angeles, it opened all that up again. And so we began fostering dogs, Sonny and myself. and it was wonderful. How many dogs do you have? I think in total, we fostered seven. Only one at a time. Never more than that. I got you. But, and we only, I mean, the shortest we had one of them was two days. And the very first one we had was an extraordinary dog. Beautiful, sensitive. It would look you right straight into the eyes and cock its head on one side. And I could feel him trying to connect with me, you know?

1:18:58And it's, so I do what I can to help the ones who need help. And, you know. You've lived just an absolutely extraordinary life. And, you know, you did a wonderful job with the book. It's wildly entertaining. It's a very difficult book to put down. The stories are just absolutely legendary. So well done in that regard. I love it and I know you're about to embark on quite the book tour. So you're gonna be doing a lot of media stuff. I guess, you know, I'm curious about what it is that you want people to take from the book, but also just your life. Like what is instructive about the experiences that you had and the lessons that you've learned as you reflect back as an 83 year old man on what's important, what's not and maybe even a guiding principle or two.

1:19:51that we could incorporate into our own lives? Well, they come down to things that I am still working on. And it's awkward being a leading actor on television and film. But being brave, being open, being sensitive to other people, tuning into them, becomes more and more and more important to me. And I find that in the close friends that I have, that is their relationship with me too, and it's a wonderful, wonderful experience.

1:20:37I wish I could go back. There are things I would like to say to my parents and my brothers, both of them, that I never said. And that makes me very, very sad that I never told them what they gave me. But this gives you an opportunity to at least say it publicly. It kind of does, yes. I mean, my first draft of this book was over 700 pages. and it's now about 440. So people are saying, so what are you gonna write next? And I say, no, no, no, no, no. There's no next. This is it. And then the other day I thought, hmm, well, maybe I could find that draft that's got 350 words in it that are all in my book.

1:21:36The director's cut. The director's cut, yeah, yeah. To your point, that was beautifully shared. Thank you. There's a section in the book that I found quite moving, which was about your relationship with vulnerability as an actor and how that's a tool and a vehicle for unlocking truth, but also as a way of being in the world, right? The power that comes with allowing yourself to be vulnerable on stage, but also with the people that you care about. Yes, yes, yes. That's perhaps the primary objective in my life now. To be vulnerable with those you care about. Yes, yes. I think that's a beautiful place to end it.

1:22:31Thank you. Thank you. You're an international gift to humanity. I just wanted to recognize you for the work that you do, of course, and this beautiful book that you're putting out into the world. I wish you much success with it. But really how you comport yourself as a man in the world. I find it to be extremely aspirational and the way that you are so open-hearted and earnest with your feelings and your friendships, I think is a guidepost for someone like myself. So thank you for that. And I loved having the opportunity to meet you and talk to you. Thank you. I've messed up at times. We all have.

1:23:16And I hold on to them. I don't let them go. I don't let them control me, of course. But they're there. And that was part of who I have been. And in a little tiny way still is. and so that helps me to reinforce the close relationships that I already have. They're so important. I hope that you can find a little bit more grace and forgiveness for yourself. I think you owe that to yourself. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much for that last comment. Yeah. And with that, I think I have to say, Au revoir. Thank you, sir.

1:24:07That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voice and Tune. change in the Plant Power way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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1:26:01Thank you.