Patrick Stewart who famously played Charles Xavier throughout the X-Men movie franchise and most recently in Logan revealed he’s been suffering from vertigo for the past eight months. However, there is hope. He believes it’s not expected to last.
Stewart described what he’s been going through at Loyola Marymount University’s School of FIlm & TV, where he participates in the Hollywood Masters interview series. “I am permanently dizzy,” he said. “I’ve seen seven doctors and I am now in the hands of a professor of neurology in London. And they have all said that it will go away.” He says it makes him “feel a little fragile.”
He’s not really sure what caused the vertigo either. However, he did say that it’s an issue with his ears and eyes. “It’s inner ears and eyes, and eyesight.”
He elaborated about how the condition goes away when he’s driving or when his body is horizontal:
We are trying to literally reprogram certain little aspects of my brain, who when they receive signals from my eyes and my ears and my body. It doesn’t make sense … The only good thing is that it goes away when I’m horizontal, so I sleep beautifully. And when I drive — and I love driving, I’m a passionate driver — I can get in my car and I’m no longer dizzy. I can drive anywhere at any speed. I have even been on a racetrack driving, and the doctors are fascinated. They are trying to find out why driving doesn’t make me dizzy.
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Stewart also described the challenges he faced while filming Logan. He specifically despised the Louisiana heat and humidity. “It was brutal. I had never experienced anything like it. We don’t have weather that like in the U.K., and it was May/June that I was shooting all of my scenes. And Hugh [Jackman] and I and Dafne Keen spent days in this damned ancient truck, driving up and down and up and down the highway, shooting long scenes inside the truck. The heat was very difficult. But it was fun.”
The biggest issue was the lack of air conditioning in the truck. “There was air-conditioning in the truck, but it didn’t reach the back seat where I was. And anyway, they couldn’t have it on because of the noise. And so we just sweated it out. But we had great fun.”
Here’s to hoping Patrick Stewart and his doctors find out what is causing his vertigo and he is able to fully recover!