Dafne Keen and Harriet Walter remember Patrick Stewart: 'I've never seen anyone so ecstatic'

Dafne Keen was 11 years old when she worked with Patrick Stewart on the film Logan — and she says he taught her more than he ever realised. Writing in tribute, Keen and fellow actor Harriet Walter have paid homage to Stewart as a performer whose generosity outshone even his craft.

What does Keen remember of Stewart?

Keen, who played the young mutant Laura opposite Stewart's Professor X, calls the experience "the unbelievable privilege of working with Patrick when I was 11". "He was a man of extraordinary warmth, wit and generosity," she writes. "He possessed that increasingly rare ability to make everyone around him feel as though they were being let in on something wonderful."

She describes him as far more than a remarkable actor. In her account, Stewart was "a teacher, a raconteur, a mischief-maker and, above all, a profoundly generous human being" who "carried his knowledge lightly, his humour generously".

Her memories are concrete. Walking through one of the house sets with him, she remarked that the only thing missing was a dog. "Without missing a beat, Patrick began barking and behaving like one, until I was absolutely roaring with laughter," she writes.

What was the sneezing pact?

The most vivid anecdote concerns one of their first days together. After an intense take, Stewart turned to her and asked, entirely seriously: "Have you ever noticed, no one ever sneezes in films?" "We should try to sneeze in this one," he said. The two then made a pact to sneak a sneeze into a take.

Keen calls it "such a Patrick observation: at once completely absurd and rather brilliant". She frames it as evidence of his attentiveness as an artist, someone who understood "there was always something worth questioning, even in the most familiar conventions of his craft".

How did he treat a child on set?

Keen credits Stewart with making a film set feel safe for a child. When he noticed her looking longingly at his Professor X wheelchair, he secretly explained that if you pushed the stick hard enough, it went very, very fast — then invited her on it and encouraged her to go faster.

"There is something incredibly moving about the idea that an actor of his stature never made a child feel small, inexperienced or peripheral," she writes. "He made you feel like a fellow conspirator, a teammate." He was equally at ease talking to children and professors, moving between Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and Pinter — quoting passages spontaneously — and "the most ridiculous schoolyard mischief without ever seeming to change gear".

She closes plainly: "He was, however briefly, my colleague and my acting professor, and he will forever be my Professor X."

What does Harriet Walter recall?

Harriet Walter remembers Stewart at an American football match in Michigan, wearing a team baseball cap "to disguise the inimitable sculpture of his head". At halftime, he stepped up to the podium, bald pate exposed, to conduct the University of Michigan Marching Band in a medley of TV theme tunes. "I've never seen anyone so ecstatic," she writes.

Her verdict on his relationship with celebrity: "Fame came relatively late to Patrick and it was therefore enjoyed in the best possible way." That night, the two performed together in Antony and Cleopatra. Walter says Stewart taught her that the famous pair's sexual chemistry lay "more to do with their minds and their verbal sparring than in any fantastic costumes or scenery". "His curiosity and courage earned him a full eventful and rewarding life," she concludes. "I was blessed in knowing him."

Together, the two tributes portray an actor whose lasting legacy, in his colleagues' telling, is less stature than kindness.