Before captain, a king: The dramatic life of Patrick Stewart

Long before he trekked aboard the USS Enterprise, Sir Patrick Stewart trod the boards on stages across the globe.

"The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time," Stewart wrote in his memoir.

The Royal Shakespeare Company wrote a tribute to Stewart, who died yesterday aged 86, calling him one of the finest classical Shakespearean actors of his generation.

"Despite being one of the most recognisable Shakespearean performers in the world, Sir Patrick remained deeply connected to Stratford-upon-Avon and the RSC throughout his career," the company said.

The Royal Shakespeare Company said his contribution was "beyond measure", with his knighthood for services to drama and his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as markers of a career that spanned 70 years.

But before he was a household name, a young Stewart cut his teeth as an ensemble member touring Australia.

Stewart joined an amateur drama group at 12 and memorised Shakespeare for fun as a teenager.

He would go on to win a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, launching his career as a character actor.

Theatre programs archived at the National Library of Australia show that a 21-year-old Stewart toured with the Old Vic company across 1961 and 1962.

Stewart had ensemble roles in Twelfth Night and The Lady of the Camellias, both directed by Robert Helpmann and starring Vivien Leigh.

ABC archives show that reporters made sure to capture the moment Leigh and Helpmann landed on the tarmac in Australia to be greeted by adoring fans, but likely didn't know that just out of frame was a star-to-be in young Stewart.

From the Young Vic, Stewart went on to join the Royal Shakespeare Company and stayed for 14 years, playing roles including Mark Antony, Henry IV, Shylock and Oberon.

In 1975, he would return to Australia to play Ejlert Løvborg in Hedda Gabler with the company.

Although often revered as a classical actor, Stewart denied this title, saying: "I was not a trained classical actor, I just had a training".

"What I did happen to do was spend a huge number of years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but doing just as much modern drama as I was doing blank verse," he told the ABC in 1995.

After joining Star Trek, he found himself frustrated at the implication from reporters that doing a syndicated television show must have meant he was "slumming it".

Stewart had a very different point of view.

"All of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all of those years sitting in the throne of England, all of those years wearing those crowns and speaking that blank verse was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise," he said.

It was Stewart's understanding of profession that made him so versatile, that every prior piece of work in an artist's portfolio contributes to the next, regardless of the piece being set in futuristic space or written in Elizabethan England.

Star Trek may have been Stewart's launch into the broader global audience, particularly in America, but he continued to return to the stage, often rehearsing shows while filming.

In 1988, Stewart premiered his one-man adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

The performance started as a three-hour rendition, performed in a church in Yorkshire.

Several years later, it would make its Broadway debut.

The revised version would be staged time and time again, nabbing a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment in 1994.

In 2007, Stewart played the role he'd waited 50 years for — Macbeth.

The Times of London said his performance was "an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humour".

"I learned it when I was 14. I memorised all the soliloquies just because I thought they were great," Stewart told The Associated Press.

"And they stuck, so I didn't have to learn those bits of the play, which is a blessing, because learning lines has now become the one curse of this job.

In 2009, Stewart starred with his dear friend Sir Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot.

McKellen wrote of his friend on social media, retelling the moment Stewart told him about taking a role on Star Trek.

"'But Patrick, think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?'" McKellen said he asked at the time.

Audiences will feel lucky to have seen Patrick Stewart deliver time and time again.

But in his own words, he felt just as lucky to see them too.

"I enjoy what I do so much that I do actually feel sucked into it, particularly the live theatre, the performing side of it," he told the ABC in 1995.

"I'm one of those really fortunate individuals, I do feel blessed in this, who ended up doing as a profession what I would've done for nothing."