Hollywood A-Lister Chris Pine reflects on his exchange year at the University of Leeds, and how the experience in and out of the lecture theatre broadened his career horizons
Life now for Hollywood movie star Chris Pine is a combination of many things – there’s the obvious wealth and stardom; the creative and dramatic talent that has seen him portray Captain James Kirk (Star Trek), Steve Trevor in the reprised Wonder Woman and title character Jack Ryan in Paramount’s eponymous £60m blockbuster; he can even lay claim to being a pin-up, albeit mentions of this elicit only an uncomfortable laugh.
it’s all a far cry from student digs in Yorkshire, an English norther heartland whose natives are decorated and admired for their straight-talking, no-frills approach to life. As impressive as the University of Leeds is, both academically and architecturally, Pine’s decision to swap the sun-baked surrounds of Los Angeles for industrial city and sparse moorland surrounds – both rugged in their individual ways – has perhaps been one of the more surreal diversions made by a tinseltown favourite.
And yet, looking for a UK base in which to undertake his exchange-year English studies, the University of California student landed in a place that would challenge and enrich him in ways he looks back on as wholly positive.
These days, the idea of Chris Pine mooching around Leeds at the turn of the millennium seems far removed from what the 40 year old&#...