Patrick Stewart, the classically trained performer who brought Shakespearean authority to the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” franchises, has died at 86.
Stewart died Wednesday in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body Dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said. His diagnoses had not previously been made public.
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“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today,” Hugh Jackman, Stewart’s longtime co-star in the “X-Men” films, wrote on social media. “And, in my book, a tremendous friend and man. I learned so much from him. I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.”
Although audiences around the world knew him best as Professor Charles Xavier in “X-Men” and Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Stewart devoted more of his career to the stage than to the X-Mansion or the USS Enterprise.
He played roles ranging from Claudius to Macbeth, regularly performed a one-man version of “A Christmas Carol” and appeared in West End and Broadway productions of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” alongside his friend Ian McKellen.
Stewart received three Olivier Awards, including one for portraying Claudius in “Hamlet” opposite David Tennant. He also won a Grammy in 1996 for best spoken word album for his recording of “Peter and the Wolf.”
Some of the strongest reviews of Stewart’s career came after he finally took on the role of Macbeth. Directed by Rupert Goold, the production opened in May 2007 at England’s Chichester Festival Theatre, moved to London’s West End, then traveled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music before reaching Broadway in 2008.
The performance brought Stewart his only Tony Award nomination. The Times of London called his Macbeth “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humor.” The Daily Telegraph described it as “a truly great performance,” while The New York Times deemed the production “a must-see.”
“Nearly 50 years I’ve waited,” Stewart told The Associated Press in 2008. He said he had learned the play at 14 and memorized its soliloquies simply because he admired them. “And they stuck, so I didn’t have to learn those bits of the play, which is a blessing, because learning lines has now become the one curse of this job.”
Starship commander grew up without a toilet
Stewart was raised in Mirfield, a working-class community in northern England. The man who would one day command a 24th-century starship grew up in a home without an indoor bathroom.
He joined an amateur drama group at 12 and spent his teenage years memorizing Shakespeare for pleasure. A scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School set him on the path to becoming a character actor.
Stewart had been bald since age 19; alopecia runs in his family.
His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, repeatedly subjected Stewart’s mother to violence, the actor wrote in a newspaper essay. “Violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
In his memoir, “Making It So,” Stewart recalled how he and his older brother Trevor prepared for their father’s drunken, angry returns home and the attacks that followed. “Sometimes it was with an open hand, other times a closed fist. Always he aimed for her head.”
Stewart later became a patron of Refuge, an organization that offers shelter and support to victims of domestic abuse.
Loving Shakespeare proved fruitful as Capt. Picard
“The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from real life in which I could inhabit another person, living in another place and time,” Stewart later wrote.
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Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and remained there for 14 years, taking on roles including Mark Antony, Henry IV, Shylock and Oberon. “People who were not in the company would say to me, ‘Give it a break. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?‘” he told the AP. “Telly?”
Stewart eventually left to look for more varied work, including the 1981 film “Excalibur.” He had just done a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1987 when an interesting offer came along. “I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail.”
It didn’t, of course. Thanks to Stewart’s rich baritone and noble bearing, the “Star Trek” franchise ran for seven years, 178 episodes and produced four feature films. He was known for his slogan “Make it so.”
His adoration for Shakespeare would serve him well when he began to play Jean-Luc Picard, a 24th century starship commander.
“There is a formality to the way they speak and comport themselves that remind me of numerous Shakespearean situations I’d been in onstage. I should play Jean Luc, I realized, as if he were a character in ‘Henry IV,’ which is about brave men,” Stewart wrote in his memoir.
Despite the Borg and Klingons, Stewart still managed to make room for blank verse. He established the Paramount Shakespeare Company, a workshop on Saturday and Sunday mornings for any actor interested. (Stewart revisited Picard in the TV series “Star Trek: Picard.”)
Stewart died just a few days after Walter Koenig, another “Star Trek” icon, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov on the original NBC TV show from 1966 to 1969.
“What a heartbreaking week it has been,” William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in the franchise, wrote on Instagram. “Sir Patrick Stewart was a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor. From the stage to the bridge of the Enterprise, he brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did.”
“Star Trek: The Next Generation” gave him higher visibility, which led to more work, including roles in the films “Conspiracy Theory,” “L.A. Story” and on Broadway, where he starred in “The Tempest,” “The Caretaker” and David Mamet’s “A Life in the Theater.” He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2010. Stewart was also an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.
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In July 1992, he and supermodel Cindy Crawford were on the cover of TV Guide’s “Top Turn-Ons,” based on a readers’ poll. In his memoir, Stewart wrote: “Absurd.”
Stewart was first introduced as the character Xavier in the original X-Men trilogy, appearing in three films from 2000 to 2006. He later returned in four more movies before Professor X’s death in 2017’s “Logan.” He reappeared in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in 2022 and reprised the role in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday.”
He also showed off his comedic chops aboard Seth MacFarlane’s Starz show “Blunt Talk” for two series and voiced Poop in “The Emoji Movie.” He made appearances on “Robot Chicken,” “Futurama” and “The Simpsons” (in one episode, Homer loses his hair, and Stewart tells him it’s great to be bald.) One of his last credits was with Jackman in 2026’s “The Sheep Detectives.”
Later in life, he proved internet-savvy and found new fans with his humor, posing in a bath in a lobster suit and triggering memes when he posted a photo of him picking apples. When he was mistakenly outed as gay by a British newspaper, he said it was a nice change. “At least I didn’t wake up to the internet telling me I was dead again,” he tweeted.
He married Brooklyn songwriter and singer Sunny Ozell in 2013, with the actor’s “X-Men” co-star McKellen officiating. Stewart later tweeted a photo of the newlyweds in a ball pit.
He is also survived by two children, a daughter, Sophia, and a son, Daniel.
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AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr contributed.
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