Patrick Stewart Dies at 86 After Brief Battle With Dementia
The British actor, best known for his roles as Captain Picard and Professor Xavier, passed away in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
By Samir Doyle ·
Patrick Stewart, the British actor who portrayed Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 86 years old. His spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, confirmed the death on Thursday. She described Stewart’s final period as a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
Stewart’s career spanned nearly five decades, moving between the stage, television, and film. While global audiences recognized him for his science fiction roles, he spent much of his professional life performing in theater. He appeared in productions of Shakespeare and other classics, often working with the Royal Shakespeare Company for 14 years.
His stage credits included portrayals of Claudius, Macbeth, and roles in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The latter performance featured his longtime friend Ian McKellen. Stewart received some of the best reviews of his career for his 2007 performance as Macbeth. That role earned him his only Tony Award nomination. The Times of London called the performance an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism, and grim humour.
Stewart often cited his early connection to Shakespeare as a defining force. He told the Associated Press in 2008 that he had waited nearly 50 years to play the role. He memorized the soliloquies when he was 14 years old. He said the lines stuck because he found them great, which spared him from the difficulty of learning new lines later in his career.
He was born in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, a working-class area in northern England. Stewart grew up in a house without a bathroom. He joined an amateur drama group at age 12. A scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School launched his acting career. He developed alopecia at a young age and had been bald since he was 19.
Domestic violence marked his childhood. His father, a former regimental sergeant major in the British Army, was prone to outbursts of repeated violence against Stewart’s mother. Stewart wrote that violence is always a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it. He later became a patron of Refuge, a charity that supports survivors of domestic abuse.
Stewart left the Royal Shakespeare Company to act in the 1981 film Excalibur. In 1987, he was offered a role in a science fiction series. He told the AP that he was in Hollywood shooting a syndicated series that producers assured him would fail. The series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes. Stewart’s character, Captain Picard, became a cultural icon. The command Make it so became one of the show’s most recognizable lines.
He expanded his film career by playing Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise. He began the role in the 2000 film X-Men and returned for several sequels. He appeared in the 2017 film Logan alongside Hugh Jackman. Stewart was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in June 2010. He also served as an ambassador for the International Rescue Committee.
His death occurred just days after the passing of Walter Koenig. Koenig played Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1969.
