In my life, I have discovered many strange coincidences that tie me to noted British actor Patrick Stewart, a man I don't personally know. So I present this list primarily as proof of how small the world is, and also as a belated birthday greeting to Mr. Stewart, who turned 59 last week.
- My close friend for years, Craig, once ran the West Coast Patrick Stewart fan club in the late '80s. He got to know Patrick very well and sent me a photo of the two of them together - Craig actually could pass for his son.
- Speaking of Patrick's son... who doesn't look that much like his father, in my opinion... I went to CalArts with Daniel Stewart, also an actor.
- Stranger still, I grew up just a few miles away from Adria Woomer, Daniel Stewart's future ex-wife. She knew several of the people I grew up with, and actually whenever I would bump into her and Daniel at a party, I wound up chatting with her more than with Daniel. Adria, if you're out there reading this, drop me a line and say hello!
- I once sat next to Patrick at a theatrical production of Shakespeare's As You Like It in 1990. He ate a lot of cinnamon candies, as I recall.
- I designed the graphics for an interactive CD-ROM (actually CD-i, if anybody remembers that) about the Titanic - several years before James Cameron's movie. Patrick did the voiceover narration for the disc, and I even got to meet him (whereupon I did manage to tell him all the strange connections we had at the time).
- Currently employed at Paramount Pictures, I art direct the official Star Trek web site and see many of Patrick's past and present costars almost on a weekly basis. (Patrick himself is due to come in for an online chat next week.)
- Of course I directed Patrick's Star Trek: The Next Generation costar Wil Wheaton in Foreign Correspondents.
- There was another ForCor crew member with close ties to Star Trek - our music recording engineer Don Hahn, who has also engineered the music scoring for all the Star Trek series, particularly The Next Generation.
- And how could I forget that ForCor transportation coordinator Dennis Tracy worked on at least two Star Trek films... as Patrick Stewart's stand-in!