Although Patrick Stewart rose to prominence in the 1980s thanks to movies like Excalibur and Dune, and especially with Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he wasn’t well known among his castmates at first), the man was already a seasoned performing veteran but that point, particularly when it came to plays. In fact, it was through his time on the stage as a younger man that he was able to meet Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind and wore a dress in it that sold for $137,000 in 2015. That in turn led to him sitting right next to the actress during a screening of the classic movie, and that particular experience with her ended on an emotional note.
Having mentioned meeting Leigh during from his well-lived life life in his new book Making It So: A Memoir (which is now available to purchase), Stewart opened up more about this experience while appearing on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. He was among the people invited to a “new release” of Gone with the Wind that “had been smartened up and tidied up, given new technology.” Even better, Stewart was lucky enough to be seated to Leigh’s left during the screening, but the actress didn’t stay for the whole screening. As he recalled:
I was sitting on one side of her, and her gorgeous boyfriend was sitting on the other side of her wearing a fabulous, expensive suit. And I saw that she was touching her face quite often, and then finally she turned to me and took my hand, and she said, ‘Patrick, I’m going to have to leave. This is so upsetting. You see, so many of these lovely people I worked with are dead, and it’s upsetting me so much. So thanks for sharing this, I hope you enjoy the night.’ And she got up, and she and John walked out. I was so touched. She could have just left. She didn’t have to say, ‘Thank you for coming, it’s very good of you’ and explain to me why she was crying. She was a superstar of her day. There was no actress today that’s ever been bigger than Vivien was. And two Academy Awards, I think.
In a separate interview with The New Yorker, Patrick Stewart explained that he met Vivien Leigh when he was 20 years old and working on a trio of London Old Vic-produced plays that all started the Gone with the Wind actress. So with Stewart being born in 1940, this places them meeting sometime in 1960 and this special screening taking place 21 year after Gone with the Wind originally played in theaters. Sadly, as Leigh pointed out, many of her costars had already died by then, and that was enough for her to want to leave before the movie finished, which Stewart found touching.
After saying those kind words about Vivien Leigh in his interview with Conan O’Brien, as well as calling her “fabulous-looking” and a “very, very nice person,” Patrick Stewart then mentioned that she had a “temper” and recalled an incident where she hit one of her fellow actresses with a bouquet of flowers across the face because she said something she didn’t like. Stewart and O’Brien then pointed out that Leigh, who died in 1967, suffered from bipolar disorder, resulting her having “bad days” and “good days,” but ultimately the former thought it was a “privilege” to work with her. Stewart capped off this portion of the conversation by sharing that Leigh attended his 21st birthday party and gave him a “golden, cotton handkerchief” that was sprayed with her trademark perfume, and he still has it to this day.
If you’re now in the mood to watch Vivien Leigh’s performance in Gone with the Wind, that movie can be streamed with a Max subscription, and it’s accompanied by a special introduction. For those more interested in looking at Patrick Stewart’s Star Trek work, including in the recently-concluded Picard, that can all be accessed by subscribing to Paramount+.
