Sir Patrick Stewart spent years feeling "ashamed and embarrassed" about the way his father was violent to his mother.
The 78-year-old actor admitted he and his siblings used to pretend the domestic violence wasn’t happening in their home and though he believes their neighbours knew what was going on, no one ever talked about it.
He told The Guardian newspaper: "For decades, I was silent, I was ashamed and embarrassed – and that embarrassment went all the way back to being seven or eight.
"At the time, our tightly knit community knew what my father did to my mother – they could hear it – but it was absolutely not talked about.
"Even with my brothers, we didn’t discuss it. I think we tried to pretend it wasn’t there."
The ‘X-Men’ actor confessed that over the years acting has brought his repressed emotions to the surface, and he recalled being particularly unsettled before going on stage to play Macbeth.
He said: "I had the uniform, the cap, the AK47, and I’d grown a moustache, although I didn’t know why.
"Then I saw my father’s face staring straight back at me. I remember that night I couldn’t give a performance. "
The ‘Logan’ star has since had regression therapy in order to help him cope with his trauma.
He explained: "I began unravelling this and finally acknowledging it had been part of my life. We would do regression therapy.
"It would be my mother and father sitting in the room of childhood home and I would be given permission to say whatever I wanted to say."
Patrick is now a patron of domestic violence charity Refuge and thinks it’s important to speak at their events to urge men to take responsibility for abusive actions.
He said: "Domestic violence is a man’s problem, we are the ones who are committing the offences, performing the cruel acts, controlling and denying, it’s the men."
Patrick Stewart was ’embarrassed’ about father’s abuse
