Beam me up (perhaps forever) Scotty

Star Trek: Nemesis is Patrick Stewart’s third big screen adventure as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise, and it could well be his last.

From the outset of shooting, Stewart and the rest of the Next Generation crew knew it was possibly their final voyage, and it made for some emotional moments, admits the 62-year-old English actor.

“I shot one of the final scenes where the entire crew is going their separate ways after 16 years together and Ryker (Jonathan Frakes) says to me, ‘Serving you has been an honour captain,’ and I broke down crying,” recalls Stewart.

“I felt like such a fool but my emotions overwhelmed me. Saying goodbye when we wrapped this film was agony for me.”

If this is the last, it will be a good way of bowing out, he says. “If it is the final one it would be, in most respects, an ideal way to close this particular story line and group of characters. It is certainly a dramatic and intense story.”

Nemesis is more of a personal journey for Picard who must face up to his own evil clone in order to save the universe.

“It’s also about long-time enemies fighting together against lone hostile forces, which is very applicable to current affairs,” Stewart says about the post September 11 world.

But despondent fans shouldn’t take out their hankies too soon. Though the Star Trek franchise may well have reached its final frontier if Nemesis does not fare well at the box office – particularly after the lacklustre returns for the last Star Trek film Insurrection four years ago – there is hope.

“If there’s interest in doing another, then Nemesis offers a wonderful opportunity for a quite startling sequel,” says Stewart. “There is a sequel to this just waiting to be made.”

Stewart says he would genuinely miss doing the series. “Mostly I’d miss the comradeship that has grown over all these years of working together. We’re not just a crew, we’ve really become a family.”

The whole Star Trek television and film franchise has been a lucrative career boost for the veteran stage actor after seven years on the small screen and three movies, First Contact (1996), Insurrection and now Nemesis.

The classically-trained, former Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Company thespian makes no apologies for doing pure Hollywood entertainment.

The well-spoken, reserved Englishman was initially an odd choice to follow in the footsteps of icon Captain Kirk (William Shatner) but Stewart seems to have made stalwart Captain Picard a Trekker favourite in his own right.

But he feels there’s still a certain amount of misunderstanding in Britain about what Star Trek has attempted to do, and why it has been such a popular success.

“There’s much more of an inclination to make fun of it. But there’s nothing I feel I need to side-step or explain away, it’s a piece of really decent entertainment.”

There is also a certain resentment of British stage actors who do well in American movies, he says: “There’s this strange mixture of resentment, envy and pride about those who have success in the United States.”

Star Trek is not Stewart’s only big screen franchise. He will be playing Professor Xavier again in the forthcoming X-Men 2.

“I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have had Star Trek for all these years and who knows what the future of X-Men will be. When I started out acting I had no inkling this would happen to me,” says the Olivier Award-winning actor who started out at the Old Vic Theatre School.

Stewart will be back on the London stage next year in a production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder.

The production company Flying Freehold, which he runs with his second wife Wendy Neuss, is also planning a television remake of The Lion In Winter which he will both star in and direct.

He has two children by first wife Sheila Falconer, 35-year-old actor son Daniel and 30-year-old London boutique-owner daughter Sophie.

“My pleasure in working is getting stronger and deeper and gives me more and more satisfaction,” he enthuses.

Stewart even hopes some Star Trek fans may catch him doing Ibsen. “Shakespeare would have understood popularising a genre and by that means accessing a wider audience.”

But just don’t ask what it is like to be a bald Hollywood star. It’s a bit of a sensitive subject.

“I lost my hair when I was 19 and that makes a big difference in how people perceive you,“ he says.

“I’ve got a bit of a big nose but people don’t ask me about that because it would be rude – but it’s always open season on baldness.”