Sir Patrick Stewart may be seventy one years old, but he’s not even close to slowing down when it comes to acting or to living an active life.

Part of why he can keep going is his good health. Stewart is in better shape than many men much younger. “I remember years and years ago, working in rep in Sheffield or Liverpool, I heard an interview with Olivier, where he said that if you’re serious about acting Shakespeare, you’ve got to be as fit as an athlete,” said Stewart. “That really made an impression on me. I’d like to go on doing what I’m doing for as long as possible, and all the great roles, well, they’re marathons, not sprints.”

Although in good shape, Stewart realizes that time is marching on for him. The actor has coronary heart disease, diagnosed six years ago. “I’ve got to that point now,” he said, “where people say things like ‘This conjunction of the planets won’t be seen for another forty-five years,’ and I think, ‘hmm, there’s every chance that I won’t be around for that.’

“But the kind of wake-up call I got puts you in the frame of mind where you don’t want to waste a moment. And being an actor is like spending your life in the world’s most expensive nursery, especially when you’re doing something like X-Men. I can honestly say that I’m having more fun these days than I’ve ever had. A lot of it is to do with the work that I do, and a lot is to do with having got things sorted out better.”

Stewart is still living young, dating a woman in her thirties, and trying new physical activities one wouldn’t normally associate with a man in his seventies. “Two years ago I put on skis for the first time,” he said. “I’ve done it eight times now, and the last time I skied all the way down a … mountain. Going really fast. At seventy-one.”

Stewart will be appearing at the Young Vic in London in a revival of Edward Bond‘s 1973 play Bingo, in which he plays a depressed and drunken Shakespeare in semi-retirement in Warwickshire. Bingo runs from February 16 through March 31.

Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s LeVar Burton will be a guest judge on Syfy’s Face Off.

On Face Off, special effects make-up artists compete to collect $100,000.

Burton will guest judge the episode airing February 22, when the artists will “design aliens based on the work of series judge Patrick Tatopoulos.”

Face Off has been renewed for a ten-episode third season.

Reading Rainbow may have fallen victim to a lack of money and a change in attitude regarding educational television programming, but former host LeVar Burton had found a way to bring it back for a new generation.

Burton believes that today’s children are in need of encouragement when it comes to reading. “There is a brand new generation of kids who could definitely use the kind of spark and inspiration Reading Rainbow provided where actually becoming a reader is concerned,” he said. “As far as I can tell, reading will never go out of style, and neither will good old fashioned storytelling.”

A mobile app is Burton’s first step in reaching out to those children. “The center-point of the App is books,” said Burton “Wonderful, lightly enhanced digital books for children. However we’re also very interested in delivering an enriching experience to kids, much like classic Reading Rainbow did on TV.”

Burton has already retrieved the @readingrainbow Twitter handle from a cybersquatter, and future plans would include DVDs and classic Reading Rainbow episodes, which would be streamed.

“Every day of my life someone comes up to me and tells me about the impact the show had on them growing up,” said Burton. It’s no secret that our educational system is no longer the platinum standard on the world stage that it once was. This is simply my way of continuing to do what I’ve always done, just in a different medium.”

When LeVar Burton couldn’t get a Twitter cybersquatter to release the Reading Rainbow name, he marshaled his Twitter followers to help him get the deed done.

Burton wanted to register the @readingrainbow handle at Twitter, but he found out that the name was already taken.

To add insult to injury, the person owning the name hadn’t posted in the last three years, and he (or she) didn’t answer Burton when Burton tried to make contact.

Burton, who has 1.74 million followers, posted the following tweet: “Dear @twitter I’m trying to contact the individual who’s sitting on @ReadingRainbow but he hasn’t Tweeted in #3YEARS Can you help? Thanks!”

Seven hundred of Burton’s fans retweeted the post, which finally caught the attention of Twitter, who sorted the manner. Twitter does not allow “name squatting” and in addition, reserves the right to remove inactive accounts.

“Thank you everyone for your help!!!,” tweeted Burton.

Fans attending the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo in Calgary, Canada, this spring will be able to see nine castmembers from Star Trek: The Next Generation in the same place.

The Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo will be held from April 27-29 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In attendance will be: Sir Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Wil Wheaton, Marina Sirtis, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn and Denise Crosby.

The TNG actors will be seen at various events at Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, including panels and discussions, autograph sessions and various photo opportunities.

On April 28, TNG EXPOsed will feature the entire TNG cast together on stage at the Stampede Corral.

Other guests at the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo include: Adam West, Amanda Tapping, David Prowse, Robert Englund, Tom Feldon, John Noble, Hayden Panettiere, George Perez, Yanick Paquette and Dale Eaglesham.

Patrick Stewart is taking a break from the theater to pursue roles in the film industry.

Stewart began his career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but moved on to television and movies, including his seven years on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and his roles on the X-Men movies.

“I felt it would be a good time to see if I could kick-start a film career,” said Stewart. “I never really had a film career, I had a franchise career, so I’ve made a decision to take eighteen months off and see what happens.”

Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s LeVar Burton is to be honored by Tufts University with an award on February 3.

The award to be bestowed upon Burton is the Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in Children’s Media.

“LeVar Burton is a natural choice as he is a true children’s literary expert,” said Julie Dobrow, director of the communications and media studies at Tufts University. “Through his exceptional career he has helped to promote reading comprehension in elementary- school-age children through the medium of television.”

Burton was the host of Reading Rainbow for twenty-six years.

Burton will receive his award on February 3 at 10 A.M. in the Distler Performance Hall. The public may attend the free ceremony.

Cliff Bole directed forty-two episodes of Star Trek; from Star Trek: The Next Generation through Star Trek: Voyager and he had an alien race named after him too.

Most of Bole’s Star Trek directing experience was with The Next Generation, where he directed twenty-five episodes, including the acclaimed The Best of Both Worlds: Parts I and II, and Unification Part II, in which Leonard Nimoy reprised his role of Spock.

Bole’s first job on Trek came courtesy of a Paramount connection. “I had a couple of guys up in management at Paramount who I knew and one of them, a fellow named Jeff Hayes, made a suggestion to Rick Berman that Rick use me,” said Bole. “I knew Rick from when he was over at Warner Bros. He’d seen some of my film and that’s how it happened. I went in for one and I stayed for almost twenty years.”

Being new to Star Trek meant not knowing about various characteristics of the Trek alien races, and Bole found out once that Vulcans don’t laugh, courtesy of Gene Roddenberry. “I did one episode with a Spock-like character in it, and this character laughed,” said Bole. “Roddenberry saw the dailies and said, ‘That was the biggest mistake you ever made.’ I said, ‘Well, I was only following the script, because it was written.’ Vulcans don’t laugh or smile, but it got by everybody. This laugh was kind of a broad laugh, but it was written. Anyway, we did a retake of it and it was fine, and it never happened again, I can assure you. But that was Roddenberry who picked it out.”

Bole knew that the two episodes of The Best of Both Worlds were “going to be great episodes. I knew it from the get-go, from the script, and I put everything I had into them. Everything. I remember that I had my wife read the script to me as I’m driving back from our place in Mt. Shasta, and then I said, ‘Do you mind driving?’ It was a joy and it was a fish-out-of-water story as far as Patrick [Stewart] was concerned, and he was into it. So it all gelled. I’m not surprised it’s well regarded because of all the work that was put into it.”

And what of that race named after Bole, the Bolians? “When it first happened I thought someone was pulling my leg, maybe Berman or someone else,” he said. “Then it became an iten. I was proud of it. To hear your name constructed into the name of an alien race, I thought it was great — and I still do. It comes up all the time. People ask me about it all the time. I’m amazed that people still follow the show enough to ask about it.”

For Mike and Denise Okuda, remastering Star Trek: The Next Generation means respecting the original work by those who first created the series.

Some fans might think that having Star Trek: The Next Generation remastered means that any mistakes will be fixed this time around. But according to Mike Okuda, that is not necessary so.

“For the most part, we find that people – for whatever reason – [mistakes are] part of the viewing experience,” said Okuda. “So to smooth over things they expect to see we find will disappoint some people. That being said, very occasionally there will be some minor tweaks. An example of that is in The Next Level, there is a shot where Picard orders the phasers to be fired at a low level to bathe the wounded space creature to bring it back to life. In the original version the phasers incorrectly came from the Captain’s Yacht. Having worked at Paramount at the time, the original ship’s designer Andrew Probert was very disappointed because that wasn’t where the phasers were supposed to come from. So we thought ‘let’s make Andy happy.’”

Others may wonder why The Next Generation is not being done in widescreen. “First of all, it is our very strong desire is to respect the original work by the original directors and cinematographers,” said Mike Okuda. “By cropping and letterboxing, we change the composition. You make things appear bigger and more crowded. It is true that in some shots – not all – but in some shots there is additional information on the film. But then again you are changing the original intention.”

The Okudas are still working on remastering the first season of The Next Generation. “We are excited that people are going to finally get to see what we have been seeing,” said Denise Okuda.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Next Level will include the pilot episode, Encounter at Farpoint, as well as Sins of the Father (S3) and The Inner Light (S5).

The two clips may be seen at StarTrek.com.