Patrick Stewart has written an affecting and personal account in the Guardian of his experience of domestic violence. During his childhood, his father, a retired Regimental Sargeant Major and "an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands" would often violently assault his mother. Patrick - faced with adults and police condoning the abuse - dealt with this trauma later through his acting career.
No one came to help. No adult stepped in and took charge. I needed someone else to take over and tell me everything was going to be all right and that it wasn't my fault. I wanted the anger to go away and, while it stayed, I felt responsible. The sense of guilt and loneliness provoked by domestic violence is tainting – and lasting. No one came, but everyone knew. Our small houses were close together. Every Monday morning I walked to school with my head down, praying that I would not encounter a neighbour or school friend who had heard the weekend's rows. I felt ashamed.
...
I managed to find my own refuge in acting. The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home – it offered escape. I could be someone else, in another place, in another time. However, whenever the role called for anger, fury, or the expression of murderous impulses, I was always afraid of what I might unleash if I surrendered myself to those feelings. It was not until 1981, when the director Ronald Eyre asked me to play the psychotic Leontes in The Winter's Tale, that the breakthrough came.
He's now a patron of Refuge, the national domestic violence charity and has done a lot of work to raise awareness in this area. The latest campaign is Four Ways To Speak Out.
Follow the link for the full text of the article, it's well worth reading.
Comments