Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek” and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.
Stewart died on Wednesday in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said in a statement on Thursday.
Although best known for his film and television roles, Stewart spent much of his career onstage, performing Shakespeare and other classics.
His career included performances as Claudius and Macbeth, a one-man adaptation of “A Christmas Carol”, and West End and Broadway productions of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” alongside long-time friend Ian McKellen.
Stewart earned some of the best reviews of his career for his 2007 portrayal of Macbeth, including his only Tony Award nomination. The Times of London described his performance as Macbeth as “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humour”.
“Nearly 50 years I’ve waited,” Stewart told the Associated Press news agency in 2008. “I learned it when I was 14. I memorised all the soliloquies just because I thought they were great. 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.”
From working-class Yorkshire to Shakespeare
The future 24th-century commander of a starship grew up in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, a working-class area of northern England, without a bathroom in his house.
He joined an amateur drama group at 12 and, as a teenager, memorised Shakespeare for fun. A scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School helped launch his acting career.
Stewart, who developed alopecia at a young age, had been bald since he was 19.
His childhood also included domestic violence. His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, was prone to outbursts of “repeated violence against my mother,” as Stewart wrote in a newspaper piece. “Violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
Stewart later became a patron of Refuge, a charity supporting survivors of domestic abuse.
From Shakespeare to Captain Picard
Stewart spent 14 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing everyone from Mark Antony and Henry IV to Shylock and Oberon.
“People who were not in the company would say to me, ‘Take a break. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?’ he told the AP. “Telly?”
He eventually left and appeared in the 1981 film “Excalibur.” In 1987, shortly after performing in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, he was offered a role in a science fiction series.
“I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail,” he said.
But “Star Trek: The Next Generation” ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes. Stewart became known worldwide as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, and his command, “Make it so”, became one of the show’s best-known lines.
Stewart also played Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men, beginning with the 2000 film “X-Men”. He returned to the role in several sequels, including 2017’s “Logan”, alongside Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
Stewart died just days after Walter Koenig, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original “Star Trek” series, which aired from 1966 to 1969.
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Stewart in June 2010. He also served as an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.
