Breaking: Sir Patrick Stewart, Star Trek's Captain Picard and X-Men's Professor X, has died at 86

Sir Patrick Stewart has died. The English stage actor who spent decades with the Royal Shakespeare Company before taking command of the Enterprise, and who went on to give the X-Men their conscience, died Wednesday, October 28, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86 (The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline).

For generations of fans he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier, two leaders defined less by power than by decency. Stewart said himself that he admired both men “for their morality, for their kindness, for their sensitivity, for their compassion” (THR). A lot of us learned something about those qualities from watching him.

The family’s statement. His death was announced by his longtime spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak (THR). “We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday at his home in Los Angeles, in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny, following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia,” the statement reads. “He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter, and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all. We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace” (Deadline).

From Mirfield to the stage. Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, Yorkshire, to Alfred and Gladys Stewart. His father, a World War II veteran who was among the last men evacuated from Dunkirk, was violent toward his mother, and Stewart, the youngest of three sons, grew up afraid at home. Decades later he came to understand his father’s behavior as likely undiagnosed post-traumatic stress, and that childhood shaped his later advocacy for veterans and for survivors of domestic abuse (THR). “I managed to find my own refuge in acting,” he wrote in 2009. “The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home — it offered escape” (THR).

At 15 he took a job at The Dewsbury Reporter, but when his editor told him to choose between journalism and acting, he quit on the spot. By 18 he had won a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and at 26 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, spending much of the 1960s there and with the National Theatre (THR). He would go on to win three Olivier Awards and earn a Tony nomination for his stage work (Deadline).

Captain Jean-Luc Picard. In the late 1980s he was little known in America. Star Trek: The Next Generation producer Robert Justman saw him reading Shakespeare at a UCLA lecture and brought him in to audition, over the doubts of Gene Roddenberry. The Los Angeles Times called him an “unknown British Shakespearean actor,” and Brent Spiner hung a sign over his dressing room that read “WARNING: Unknown British Shakespearean Actor” (THR).

The show premiered in September 1987 and, after a slow start with fans, became something special. “The Best of Both Worlds,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “The Inner Light,” in which Picard lives an entire lifetime in moments, are still counted among the finest hours of TV science fiction. The Next Generation ran seven seasons, ending in 1994 with an Emmy nomination for outstanding drama series, and led to four films: Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002) (THR). Stewart credited that cast, one of the closest in television, with changing how he worked: “Those guys taught me that you can do good work and have a good time at the same time” (THR).

He came back to the role after 17 years for Star Trek: Picard, which debuted in January 2020 (THR). It earned him a Critics Choice Super Award for Best Actor in a Science Fiction/Fantasy Series and concluded its third and final season in April 2023 (Deadline).

Professor X. Wary of typecasting, Stewart hesitated before taking the role of Charles Xavier in 2000’s X-Men, the film that helped launch the modern era of superhero movies. He played opposite his longtime friend Ian McKellen as Magneto, and returned as Xavier in X2: X-Men United (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) and Logan (2017), with cameos in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and The Wolverine (2013) (THR).

A career far beyond the bridge. He made his U.S. film debut in John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and played Gurney Halleck in David Lynch’s Dune (1984). He drew Emmy and Golden Globe nominations as Captain Ahab in the 1998 miniseries Moby Dick and as King Henry II in The Lion in Winter (2003), another Emmy nomination for a comic turn as himself on Extras, and one more for playing King Claudius in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet. He starred in Starz’s Blunt Talk, voiced Avery Bullock on American Dad!, played Bosley in 2019’s Charlie’s Angels, and had a voice role this year in The Sheep Detectives (THR). He was also a New York Times best-selling author (Deadline), with his 2023 memoir, Making It So (THR).

Queen Elizabeth II made him an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2001 New Year Honours and knighted him in 2010. “I never imagined anything like that could possibly happen to me,” he said, “and in fact, it is still a significant unreality to me” (THR).

His voice in our games. Gamers knew that voice too.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity. He voiced Captain Picard alongside the rest of the Next Generation cast in the 1995 adventure game (MobyGames).
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. He was Emperor Uriel Septim VII, the doomed ruler who walks through your prison cell at the very start of the game (IGN), and Bethesda billed him first among the game’s “acting legends” (Bethesda). For a lot of players, his was the first voice they heard in Cyrodiil.
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Konami revealed him as the mysterious Zobek when it unveiled the game at E3 2009 (VideoGamer, Engadget).

Family. Stewart married theater choreographer Sheila Falconer in 1966; they were together until 1990 and had two children, Daniel and Sophia. He was married to Star Trek producer Wendy Neuss from 2000 to 2003, and in 2013 he married jazz musician Sunny Ozell in a ceremony officiated by McKellen (THR).

In Making It So, he wrote of the character who defined so much of his life: “Like me, Jean-Luc has lived an unusual life that has taken him far beyond the bounds of normal human experience. But he is also someone who has remained true to his earthbound roots, for they are what gave him his identity. In the end, he feels the call of home, as do I” (THR).

PPR take: Some actors play heroes. Patrick Stewart showed us what a good one sounds like: calm under pressure, curious, willing to listen and quick to do the right thing. He brought Shakespeare to a starship bridge and treated every role, from a Starfleet captain to an emperor who’s only on screen for a few minutes, as if it mattered, because to the people watching it did. Our thoughts are with Sunny, Daniel, Sophia and everyone who loved him. Thank you, Sir Patrick. Rest easy, Captain.