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Video exclusive: Actor Patrick Stewart talks to pupils at his old school in Mirfield
ACTING legend Sir Patrick Stewart has returned to the school where he first trod the boards 60 years ago to launch it as an academy.
Mirfield Grammar School and sixth form marked the occasion by presenting their former pupil with a plaque – made with wood from the stage which he made his acting debut.
Star Trek actor Sir Patrick returned to the school yesterday to mark its becoming an academy, opting out of council control to be funded directly from Government.
Among the guests at the school was his former drama teacher Cecil Dormand, the man who first spotted his potential.
Speaking to students Sir Patrick said: “I had not expected when I came through the door to find that the stage of the school remains unchanged. I had thought that like so many other things in this establishment it would have been transformed, modernised, updated, upgraded but here it still is and that gives me so much pleasure.”
Sir Patrick also told pupils how his career as an actor had started at the school after Mr Dormand had given him his first role in a play.
He said: “When it came to the first rehearsal I felt at home on the stage. When we did our first performance and the lights went down and then lit up the stage and I made my entrance, unlike how it would be for most people – terrifying to be brightly lit up in front of 200 people staring up at you in the dark – for me I found I was in the safest place I had ever been.”
Mr Dormand said Sir Patrick’s return yesterday was “a bit special” for the school.
He said: “He was a very talented boy and showed signs of being a very good actor from a very early age 11 or 12... He was very well mannered, just a model pupil.”
Mirfield Grammar’s principal Lorraine Baker said Sir Patrick was an international star and a role model to the pupils.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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