Sir Patrick Stewart Dies at 86, Captain of Stage and Screen

Sir Patrick Stewart died Wednesday at 86 at his home in Los Angeles. A statement on his Facebook and Instagram pages said he died after "a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia."

Stewart built his fame on two patriarchs: Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films and Captain Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the starship USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation and its later spinoff, Picard. Those characters wrestled with honor, morality and courage. He will appear one final time as Professor Xavier in the upcoming film Avengers: Doomsday.

From Yorkshire hardship to the Royal Shakespeare Company

The compassion that defined his screen father figures grew out of a harsh childhood. Stewart grew up in Yorkshire with a father he remembered as alcoholic and abusive. He found refuge in school, and then in Shakespeare. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and debuted on Broadway in 1970 in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"To stand in the middle of an empty stage in an empty theater and feel that I was at home was everything," Stewart told NPR in 2023. "But it took a while for me to get there."

He worked alongside the finest Shakespeareans of his generation, including Judi Dench and Ian McKellen. He was lecturing on Shakespeare at UCLA when producers raised his name for the lead in a new Star Trek series.

What did McKellen tell him about Star Trek?

His closest colleagues urged him to refuse the part. "Don't do this, Patrick," McKellen advised him. "You're a very good stage actor. That's where you ought to be. Don't do it."

Stewart's agent offered reassurance of a different kind. He told the actor the series would probably not survive its first season, and that a quick payday awaited. "'Do six months' work. Make some money for the first time in your life and get well known. Get a suntan, and go home.' And I thought, yeah, that doesn't sound too bad. I could live with that," Stewart recalled to NPR.

The calculation failed spectacularly. Star Trek: The Next Generation ran for seven seasons, from 1987 to 1994, and became a tremendous hit. Fans embraced Stewart's cool-headed captain, his fondness for Earl Grey tea, and his signature commands: "Engage!" and "Make it so!"

What does Star Trek's success change for the stage actor?

The franchise made Stewart a global star, but it narrowed his Shakespearean path. Across his career he portrayed only a handful of Shakespeare's leading men. He channeled some of that unspent energy into an award-winning one-man version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in which he played more than 40 roles.

By the start of the 21st century, Stewart had rebuilt his stage career while voicing characters in numerous big-budget animated films. In 2000 he took command of a second blockbuster franchise as Professor Xavier in X-Men.

A final return as Picard

Stewart believed his time as Picard had ended. A team of producers, including the novelist Michael Chabon, disagreed. They pitched him Star Trek: Picard, which began streaming on the CBS service, now called Paramount+, in 2020.

"I would've been happy just shaking Patrick Stewart's hand and telling him how much I loved him on Star Trek," Chabon told NPR. "But to be able to actually write words that he will speak and act is — it's incredible."

In the series, Picard struggles with the psychological damage that led him to leave Starfleet. The performance is vintage Stewart: keen-eyed, haunted, weary, yet joyful. As the obituary's closing line put it, while this Picard was trapped in the past, Patrick Stewart spent his career charting the future — a future that will reach audiences once more in Avengers: Doomsday.