Sir Patrick Stewart has recalled the costly lengths he went to in a bid to stop going bald as a teenager.
The British acting legend, 83, was just 17 when he began to lose his hair, and immediately went on a hunt to find a solution.
Writing in his new memoir, Making It So, the star of stage and screen revealed that he began exploring hair loss treatments when he was studying drama in Bristol.
He penned: “I decided, despite the fact that my scholarship was very generous, that I needed to make some extra money. Why? Because I was rapidly losing my hair, and I wanted to be able to pay for treatment at a hair clinic in Bristol.
“I had grown up with thick, dark, wavy hair, but in my first year of drama school, when I was 17, it started to thin out at an accelerated rate.
“The more hair I lost, the more attention I paid to the clinic. Finally, one day, I screwed up the courage to walk in and have a chat with the people inside. They told me what the treatment would cost. That’s when I realized I needed more cash in my pocket.”
In a bid to raise the funds for his treatment, the Star Trek actor revealed he tried his hand at bricklaying near his family home in Mirfield, West Yorkshire during his Easter holidays.
He continued: “Just up the road from my parents’ house was the office of a small building firm. I walked in, found the boss, and asked him if he had any unskilled work available just for three weeks.
“He told me that his chief bricklayer needed a labourer and that I could start right away. The job was right down the street. Perfect.”
Despite his efforts, Stewart’s treatments were unsuccessful and he was completely bald by the time he was 19.
“The clinic treatments in Bristol that I’d invested my hard-earned bricklayer money into achieved nothing,” he penned. “I must have had three or four sessions, which involved the placing of electrode patches on my scalp, some massaging by hand, and the application of various creams.
“But it was hopeless. By the age of 19, I was as bald on top as I am now.”
