Patrick Stewart, Star Trek and X-Men Actor, Dies at 86
The British actor rose from a poor childhood in Yorkshire to the Royal Shakespeare Company, then to worldwide fame on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.
Patrick Stewart, the Shakespearean stage actor who found worldwide fame as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and as Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died at the age of 86.
Stewart died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement posted on his social media accounts by his longtime spokesperson. He was in the care of his wife, Sunny, after what the statement called “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
It isn’t clear when he was diagnosed. He kept working into his 80s.
Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, a town in Yorkshire in northern England. He grew up in poverty and later described a difficult childhood shaped by his father’s return from World War Two as an alcoholic suffering from post-traumatic stress. Stewart said his father was violent toward his mother, and as a boy, he would place himself between his parents in an attempt to protect her.
Acting gave him a safe place. When he was 12, a teacher put a copy of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” in his hands, and it changed his life. He began losing his hair at 17 and was bald by 19. It embarrassed him at the time, but he came to embrace it.
He became a professional actor at 18. In 1966, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he spent years earning praise on the British stage.
But it was television that made him a star. He was 47 when he was cast as Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” a sequel to the original 1960s series created by Gene Roddenberry. The show ran from 1987 to 1994.
He almost didn’t take the part. His close friend and fellow Shakespearean actor Ian McKellen told him to turn it down and stay in the theater. Stewart took it anyway, and Picard became one of the most loved characters in the franchise.
Picard was a very different captain from William Shatner’s bold and swaggering James T. Kirk. He was thoughtful and disciplined, and some viewers found him stiff at first. His orders, “Make it so” and “Engage,” became famous catchphrases.
Stewart played Picard in 176 episodes over seven seasons. He went on to play him in several “Star Trek” films and in the streaming series “Star Trek: Picard,” which began in 2020, when he was 79.
He admitted he was too serious with his castmates early on. He once called a meeting to tell them they were joking around too much on set. “We are not here to have fun,” he recalled telling them in a 2023 interview with the New Yorker. He said the cast never let him forget it and taught him to loosen up.
He also said he wasn’t happy with his own work in the first two seasons. He felt Picard was authoritative but lacked warmth, and he believed the role got better as the show went on.
Stewart was just as unsure about playing Professor X, the mutant leader who uses a wheelchair in Marvel’s “X-Men.” He’d already done fantasy and science fiction, and he didn’t want to repeat himself. But he was talked into it, and he later said he had been proved wrong again.
He first played the role in “X-Men” in 2000 and returned for several sequels, appearing alongside Ian McKellen, who portrayed the villain Magneto. Stewart also appeared in the 2022 Marvel film “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”
His final film role will be Charles Xavier once more, in Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” which is due in theaters on December 18. Marvel Studios paid tribute to him on Thursday. The studio said he was “a singular talent, a generous collaborator and a true gentleman.”
Queen Elizabeth II knighted him at Buckingham Palace in 2010 for his services to drama. At the time, he told reporters that his heroes were Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, and that being knighted like them was the greatest honor of his career.
Stewart was married three times. He married his third wife, the American singer Sunny Ozell, in 2013. He is survived by her and by his two children, Daniel and Sophie.
