Patrick Stewart, a prolific actor who rose to prominence first as a Shakespearean master before becoming a household name as the paternal Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 86.
He died after a “brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, according to a statement shared on Mr. Stewart’s social media accounts.
Mr. Stewart’s versatility as a performer took him across genres and forms, from drama to comedy and television to the stage. He began as a mainstay figure in British theater, spending almost two decades as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in productions of “Hamlet,” “The Tempest” and “Much Ado About Nothing.”
But the English actor experienced a breakthrough with American audiences for his role as the serene Picard in the 1987 spin-off of the “Star Trek” television series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
He soon became a cultural icon associated with Picard’s trademark phrases, such as “Make it so,” which he referenced in the title of his memoir, and “Engage!”
Despite the obsessive following of the series, he never resented the lifelong association.
“For a lot of people, I will be locked for all time on the bridge of the Enterprise in my spacesuit,” Mr. Stewart told The Washington Post in 1997. “Not only am I reconciled to that, I’m quite proud of it. The show represents quality television. It was intelligent, thoughtful, argumentative, and it also told wonderful stories.”
After his television success, he kept one foot in the theater world, taking on the title role of “Othello” at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre in 1997, and as Macbeth, earning his only Tony nomination, in 2008. “So charismatic is Stewart as an actor that he can make the simple act of preparing a ham sandwich one of the scariest things you’ve ever seen,” Charles Spencer wrote in the Daily Telegraph about his performance.
For younger generations, Mr. Stewart would become synonymous with another fatherly character in a separate science-fiction universe, playing Professor X in the X-Men franchise. He also earned wide acclaim for his stage work in 2013 and 2014, when he appeared alongside actor Ian McKellen, a longtime friend, in Broadway productions of “Waiting for Godot” and “No Man’s Land,” an experience he later described to The Post as encapsulating the thrill of live theater.
“We literally played,” he said. “No performance was ever quite the same, and that’s one of the wonderful things about being in a stage production, because every evening, every matinee, you can start again. You can embrace something new and explore it.”
‘I was hooked’
The youngest of three sons, Mr. Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, England. His father, Alfred, was a regimental sergeant major in the British army, and his mother worked at a textile factory. His childhood was mired by poor housing conditions and, after his father sunk into alcoholism, domestic abuse.
When Mr. Stewart was 11 years old, an English teacher, Cecil Dormand, gave him a copy of a script for “The Merchant of Venice” and told him to perform, setting off a decades-long adoration of drama.
“A 400-year-old writer reached out a hand in invitation to me that morning,” Mr. Stewart once wrote. “I felt a sense of an internal, private me being released and connecting with something mysterious, alien and exciting. I was hooked.”
At the urging of Dormand, Mr. Stewart took a drama course at a nearby school. Decades later, Mr. Stewart learned that his attendance had been paid for by his one-time teacher. After graduating, he worked multiple jobs, including as a newspaper reporter and a furniture salesman, before receiving a scholarship to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theater School.
He made his professional acting debut for the Lincoln Repertory Company in a production of “Treasure Island” two years later. By 19, Mr. Stewart was bald, a result of alopecia in his family.
Over the decades, Mr. Stewart spoke out for progressive causes, criticizing the Iraq War and advocating LGBTQ rights. He remained a lifelong supporter of Huddersfield Town, his hometown soccer club.
Mr. Stewart’s marriages to Sheila Falconer and Star Trek producer Wendy Neuss ended in divorce. Both marriages, he wrote in his memoir, faltered after his affairs with younger women. In 2013, he married singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell. He is survived by Ozell, along with two children from his first marriage. His death comes just days after the death of Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov, the Russian ensign and starship navigator, on the original “Star Trek” series from 1966 to 1969.
In 2010, Mr. Stewart was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, a feather in his cap after a career of drama. Across the decades, Mr. Stewart believed that taking risks is what ensured his success as a performer.
“You have to be brave,” he told NPR in 2020. “You have to step into the unknown. You have to jump off the edge of the cliff. All of those things are required of actors. Once I’d finally understood that, I knew what direction I had to go in.”
‘No experience is ever wasted’
Mr. Stewart’s Hollywood arrival came later in life. One news article infamously referred to the then-47-year-old as an “unknown British Shakespearean actor” when announcing his casting in “The Next Generation.” But Mr. Stewart had almost turned down the career-defining Star Trek role, in part at the urging of McKellen, his friend and fellow British stage actor.
“There are few people, particularly with regard to acting, whose counsel I trust more than Ian’s,” Mr. Stewart wrote in his memoir. “But this time I had to tell him that I felt theater would return to my life whenever I was ready for it, whereas an offer of the lead role in an American TV series might never come again.”
The series ran until 1994, but Mr. Stewart wasn’t able to leave Captain Picard behind. He returned to the role on “Star Trek: Picard,” which ran for three seasons on Paramount Plus beginning in 2020.
After feeling typecast as Picard, Mr. Stewart took the role of Charles Xavier — or Professor X — in 2000’s “X-Men,” which introduced him to a new generation of audiences. He received praise for a grizzled depiction of Xavier in 2017’s moody “Logan,” which landed Mr. Stewart a nod for best supporting actor at the Critics Choice Awards. He reprised the role one last time for the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday,” which arrives in theaters in December.
“Mr. Stewart, using a rasp that suggests decay is working its way out from the inside, does some beautiful work, especially with [Hugh] Jackman,” Manohla Dargis wrote for the New York Times about “Logan.”
Outside Mr. Stewart’s consistent stage work, he continued to reinvent himself. His irreverent and revealing posts on social media made him something of a viral star in his twilight years, prompting The Post to ask if Mr. Stewart was the coolest senior citizen in the universe.
With a deep and commanding presence behind the microphone, he lent his voice to video games and animated shows, such as “Family Guy,” “Robot Chicken” and “American Dad.” Earlier this year, Mr. Stewart voiced an elder ram named Sir Ritchfield in “The Sheep Detectives” and adopted the persona of the obstinate “Pigtrick” Stewart to voice a character in the series “Bait.”
No matter the role, Mr. Stewart summoned his classical training by drawing on the range of challenging and rewarding experiences in his personal life.
“We were taught how to store emotions,” he said in 2014. “It means no experience is ever wasted.”
Fritz Hahn contributed to this report.
The post Patrick Stewart, Shakespearean actor and Star Trek star, dies at 86 appeared first on Washington Post.
