Patrick Stewart's life on stage and screen: Making It So: A Memoir

But Patrick Stewart is so much more: a distinguished stage and screen actor whose career spans six decades, starting at England's Royal Shakespeare Company.

He's the recipient of three Olivier Awards, Emmy and Tony Award nominations, and a Grammy Award, among countless honours.

Now he regales us with his long-awaited memoir, Making It So - a take on his famous Star Trek line "Make it so".

The book serves as a revealing portrait of a driven artist - from his humble beginnings in working-class Yorkshire to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide fame.

Fellow actor Sir Ian McKellen says of the memoir: "He writes as well as he acts, with insight, truth and passion".

Before he dared dream of acting, Stewart writes that he was "just a poor English kid in love with music and the movies, particularly anything that came from America".

He and his mother shared a love of movies - Walt Disney films, Doris Day musicals, Randolph Scott westerns. It was a glimpse into life outside their little corner of England.

Stewart travelled a long road to reach stardom - and when he hit the big screen it wasn't all plain sailing.

Take, for instance, his role in the movie Dune. A few weeks into the shoot there was excitement that "Sting" would be joining the cast.

Classical music fan Stewart struck up a conversation with... "So, I understand that are a musician".

The hole kept getting deeper with questions like "Do you ... play in a group?" To which, of course, the answer was "Yes, with the Police".

"You play in a police band? Wow. How marvellous!"

Stewart writes he has never fully recovered from the embarrassment. Happily, Sting has forgiven him.

When he landed the role of Jean-Luc Picard, he knew his life was about to change. It amused his children that their dad, of all people, was the new captain of the Enterprise.

"They were the Trek fans, not me," he writes. "They would trade lines of dialogue between William Shatner's Kirk and Leonard Nimoy's Spock in front of me, knowing that I wouldn't catch the references, and revelled in my befuddlement."

He has grown to treasure Jean-Luc who, very much like Stewart, "has lived an unusual life that has taken him far from beyond the bounds of normal human experience".

Making It So: A Memoir, by Patrick Stewart (Simon & Schuster) RRP $55.