Itâs difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.
It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.
Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).
In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.
But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).
The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guysâąïž and it wasn't even remotely close.
So yeah, today he's an old, revered thespian who is occasionally Charles Xavier, but not only did Patrick Stewart pave the way for other bald actors to be considered leading men, he discombobulated Hollywood with his unconventional attractiveness and it was amazing.
