Sir Patrick Steward Celebrates His 80th Birthday with Shakespeare's Sonnet 8

It is Sir Patrick Steward's 80th birthday and he has found the perfect way to glide into another year of his life--with Sonnet 80. It was in March that he started reading one Sonnet each day and posting videos of them on Twitter.

And when it was time for his 80th birthday on Monday, he was well in time with Sonnet 80.

"Sonnet 80 arrives on the eve of my 80th birthday. #ASonnetADay (sic)," he captioned the video.

"I had not realised that we were at a rather significant point in these sonnets. We just passed the halfway mark," said the veteran actor in a video posted on Sunday. "There are still 74 to go. But not only are we at the halfway mark, we are at the point of Sonnet 80. And that has special meaning for me, because tomorrow, I am 80."

"Thank you for tuning in, and I hope you will do the same tomorrow, and I will try and make the sonnet as cheerful and birthday-like as possible," he said as he began with the poem.

Patrick, an English actor, was born on July 13, 1940 and has worked as a producer and director too. He has been nominated for Olivier, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, and Saturn Awards in his acting career spanning upto six decades.

The actor, who started working in American Television and films only in the 1980s, has quite a few memorable roles to his credit. The actor, who has always remained with the Royal Shakespeare Company, despite doing other projects played King Claudius in Hamlet in the West End in 2008 and subsequently won a second Olivier Award.