"In the public image, Patrick is the premier commander, but he has a marvelous sense of comedy," said director David Jones of Patrick Stewart, who stars in Jones' production of The Caretaker which has its opening in New York tomorrow night.

Speaking to The New York Times, Stewart said that his character Davies' humor stems from his self-absorption. "He is utterly, outrageously audacious, so brazen in his lying."

In fact, Stewart said, the comedy by Harold Pinter is so hilarious that he laughs at his own performance. "This is a shameful thing to admit: I have never been in a play where I have broken myself up as much as in this."

Of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he played Captain Picard for more than a decade, Stewart noted, "What the series did was to give me a quality of self-confidence...[and] material security."

Davies is a homeless man who becomes the caretaker of a London home and plays those better off than himself against one another. "He has hit rock bottom, and he uses every possible means, some of them thoroughly despicable, to hang on," said the actor.

The 5' 10 1/2" actor said that he felt himself shrinking to play Davies: "I've shrunk by three inches...I've found a way of making my body do that."

To read more, including Stewart's tribute to Pinter actor and The Lord of the Rings' Bilbo Baggins, Ian Holm, see The New York Times. The Caretaker opens at the American Airlines Theater on November 9th.

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