Sir Patrick Stewart, the classically trained actor who found worldwide fame as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Marvel's Professor Charles Xavier, has died at the age of 86. His death at his Los Angeles home was announced on his Instagram, in a post that said it followed a "brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body Dementia".
Throughout a career spanning more than 60 years across film, television and theatre, including 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Sir Patrick was known for speaking his mind, backing political campaigns and entertaining talk shows with anecdotes.
Early Life and Career
Born in Mirfield, Yorkshire in 1940, Sir Patrick was the son of an army sergeant major, who he later revealed subjected his mother to repeated violence. He enrolled in an eight-day drama course at age 12, and quit school at 15 to work as a cub reporter on a local paper, leaving the day the editor gave him an ultimatum to choose between acting and journalism.
After working as a furniture salesman, he won a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic theatre school at 17. The famously bald star wore a toupee for auditions, promising "two actors for the price of one".
Star Trek and Hollywood Fame
In his mid-20s, Sir Patrick joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing alongside actors including Ian Richardson and Sir Ben Kingsley. He landed roles in TV dramas such as I, Claudius, Smiley's People and Fall of Eagles, and briefly appeared in Coronation Street in the 1960s.
He shot to fame originating the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987. The sci-fi series ran for seven years, with films Star Trek Generations in 1994 and Star Trek: First Contact in 1996. Sir Patrick later said the success of the show handicapped him because directors did not want to cast the captain of the Starship Enterprise in their films.
He later admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry took a dislike to him almost immediately, saying he did not "want a bald, middle-aged Englishman" for the role. Sir Patrick said: "Somewhere in the cellar of Paramount Pictures, there's a Post-it note which says, 'I do not want to hear Patrick Stewart's name mentioned again ever,' signed Gene Roddenberry."
Despite this, his Hollywood career flourished in the 1990s with roles in the musical Let It Be Me, romantic comedy Jeffrey, Julia Roberts-starring thriller Conspiracy Theory and animated film The Prince Of Egypt. He took on his biggest big-screen role as Professor Charles Xavier in the first three X-Men blockbusters from 2000, returning for X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014), Logan (2017), Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness (2022) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).
Awards and Honours
Sir Patrick earned a Grammy for best spoken word album for children for Prokofiev: Peter And The Wolf in 1996. He also earned four Emmy nominations and two supporting actor Olivier Awards for Shakespeare plays, the first for Antony And Cleopatra in 1979 and the second for Hamlet in 2009.
He became an officer of the OBE in 2001 and received his knighthood for services to drama in 2009, knighted by the late Queen in 2010. At the time, he said: "It was an unlooked-for honour but as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness. The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. And now to find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me."
In 2009, he dedicated his Olivier for Hamlet to David Tennant, who had to miss most of the London run of the RSC production due to a back injury. That same year, he finished a 22-week run of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot alongside Sir Ian McKellen.
Activism and Personal Life
Sir Patrick had a public row with comedian James Corden at the 2010 Glamour Awards, exchanging verbal jabs on stage. The pair reportedly made up and starred together in a skit for the Channel 4 Comedy Gala.
A year later, he pledged support for Dignity in Dying, a campaign calling for a change in the law on assisted dying in the UK. He said: "We have no control over how we arrive in the world but at the end of a life we should have control over how we leave it." He echoed these thoughts in 2022, telling MSPs: "Dying people should not be forced to take drastic measures travelling to another country to take their own life. They should have the choice to die at home on their own terms."
In 2012, he returned to the stage for the 60th anniversary of The Mousetrap, and a year later married his wife Sunny Ozell, 38 years his junior. He signed an open letter before the Scottish independence vote urging Britain to "stay together", and later tried to dissuade voters from leaving the European Union.
In 2015, he returned to his journalism roots in US sitcom Blunt Talk as a cable news reporter. He reunited with Sir Ian in 2016 for a revival of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, and played white-supremacist Darcy Banker in the horror film Green Room. Asked about playing a villain, Sir Patrick told PA: "On the contrary. I embraced the contrast as fully as possible."
A year later on The Graham Norton Show, he revealed an intimate moment with his wife led to a medical check-up on whether he was circumcised. He said: "I happened to be seeing my doctor the next day for a check-up so while he was down there I said, 'By the way, my wife and I have had a little disagreement, I am circumcised, aren't I?' He took a closer look and said: 'Not! I am Jewish, and definitely know the difference!'". Regretting the admission, he said: "Oh no, my grandchildren will be watching this!"
In 2018, he called for medicinal cannabis to be legalised, supporting young epilepsy patient Alfie Dingley and his family in a petition delivered to then Prime Minister Theresa May. He said: "I have been registered for medical marijuana in California for over three years and have found it immensely beneficial for my arthritis. I had to have eight steroid injections in my fingers and knuckles, which was about as painful as anything one could imagine, because medicinal cannabis is not available here."
That year, he also opened the London launch of the People's Vote movement for a referendum on the final EU deal, telling the crowd: "It is not Charles Xavier standing here in front of you – although I can assure you that if he was, he would have voted Remain. And why? Because unity, common cause, wellbeing of society and debate were paramount to belief of this fictional character."
In 2019, he appeared in The Kid Who Would Be King. The next year, he put his handprints outside the TCL Chinese Theatre and returned to his best-known sci-fi role with Star Trek: Picard. "I'm still not really believing any of it," he said at the ceremony. "Any moment now somebody will say, 'Patrick, Patrick, get up, you're dreaming again.'"
Following Brexit, he scrapped plans to apply for US citizenship so he could vote against Donald Trump, telling the Press Association in 2020: "I think we have our own Trump in our country here today, so I am going to be using my vote to try and get rid of him." Sir Patrick, who was married three times, leaves a son and a daughter.
