Star Trek: 10 Biggest Takeaways From Patrick Stewart's Memoir (and One That Wasn't)

If Star Trek or X-Men aren't your strongest associations with Patrick Stewart then you might be diving back into the mid-1980s and David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Stewart was actually the second choice for the part of Gurney Halleck and a last-minute addition to the cast. Lynch had remembered Stewart from Trevor Nunn's 1982 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry IV. In that performance, Stewart had played the king with a long greying wig and a gaunt appearance that had stuck firmly in the Twin Peaks creator's mind.

Come the moment when Patrick Stewart stepped into David Lynch's room with Dune just about to shoot and the actor found the director incredibly quiet and standoffish. That relationship would make for a difficult shoot as Lynch would never talk directly to Stewart and would address the cast as a whole should there be any form of communication between the two.

This weird situation would only be understood by Stewart when he was having dinner with Raffaella De Laurentis close to the end of production. Lynch had wanted him because of the look he had developed for Henry IV and was somewhat taken aback to find that the aging, long-haired king was actually a slightly tanned, bald Yorkshireman.

Stewart was sworn not to discuss his findings with the director!