I owe it all to my Yorkshire teacher, says newly knighted Patrick Stewart (with video)

The star of stage and screen said English teacher Cecil Dormand had encouraged him to perform and cast him in his play with adults.

Without the belief of the man with whom the actor shared a celebratory lunch, he would never be where he was today.

The award-winning performer is best known for his sci-fi roles in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Superhero X-men blockbuster movies and said he was honoured to be in the company of other great actor knights.

Sir Patrick, 69, who looked smart in a dark suit, said of the knighthood: "It was an unlooked-for honour but as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness.

"The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held.

"And now to find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me."

The Queen is reported to be a fan of the star, who has enjoyed a 50-year career in movies, TV and the theatre, including 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, the son of an army sergeant major, who he later revealed subjected his mother to repeated bouts of violence.

He quit school at 15 to work as a cub reporter on a local paper but left the day the editor gave him an ultimatum - to choose either acting or journalism.

Stewart worked as a furniture salesman before winning a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic theatre school at the age of 17.

The famously-bald star wore a toupee for auditions and promised "two actors for the price of one".

In his mid-20s, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing alongside the likes of Ian Richardson and Ben Kingsley.

He also landed roles in TV dramas such as I, Claudius, Smiley's People, and Fall Of Eagles, in which he played Russian revolutionary Lenin.

The Shakespearean actor shot to fame when he originated the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.

The sci-fi TV series ran for seven years, and Stewart later said the success of the show handicapped him because directors did not want to cast the captain of the Starship Enterprise in their films.

On the big screen, Stewart's biggest role has been as Professor Charles Xavier in all three of the Hollywood superhero X-Men blockbusters, which began life in 2000.

The left-wing actor returned to Britain and the theatre in 2004 after living in Los Angeles for more than 15 years.

He won an Olivier award for his performance in Hamlet and this Christmas appeared opposite David Tennant in the televised version of the play, taking dual roles as Claudius and the ghost.

When asked what had sparked his interest in acting, Sir Patrick replied: "When I leave here I will be going to a luncheon that has been arranged and sitting on my right will be a man called Cecil Dormand who was my English teacher when I was a child.

"Although many people in my life and career have had great influence on me, without this one man, none of it would have happened.

"Because he was the one that put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand, he was the one who told me it was a play and not a dramatic poem, he was the one who said 'now get up on your feet and perform, this is a play, it's life'.

"He was the one who said when I was leaving the secondary modern 'have you ever thought of doing this as a profession?'.

"He put me in a play with adults, so I owe literally everything to this man."

Speaking about his time in Star Trek, which made him a household name, the actor said: "I had success in a science fiction series, we did 178 episodes and then, thinking that's over, the X-Men franchise came along and I did three movies for that.

"What was most satisfying was to return to the UK in 2004 and, after a few months of nervous waiting where nothing happened, to find that I had the potential for a career here again and it's taken off in a way that I've never anticipated."

The actor said his great love was for the theatre, especially Shakespeare, and in recent years he has had roles in a number of classic plays, including Macbeth, Anthony And Cleopatra, The Tempest and Hamlet.

Sir Patrick said: "It's all I ever wanted to do. I thought it would be nice to do television but I never had any ambition to be in films because it was too remote a possibility.

"Then to find that I have been in movies and successful ones too... but theatre is my love."