London, November 28 : Patrick Stewart has confessed that he turns to traumatic childhood memories to boost his performances.

The X-Men actor confessed being emotionally scarred after witnessing his father beat his mother while he was growing up.

The 69-year-old veteran revealed he digs into the pain of the domestic violence he witnessed as a child to deliver his most emotional performances.

"The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home - it offered escape. I could be someone else, in another place, in another time,” the Daily Express quoted him as saying.

“It was not until 1981, when the director Ronald Eyre asked me to play the psychotic Leontes in The Winter''s Tale, that the breakthrough came.

"He quietly told me that the play would only work if I gave myself over, completely and totally, to the delusions, madness and murderousness of this man.

“From that time forward I was never again afraid of my feelings on stage," he added. (ANI)