Patrick Stewart, the bald-headed English actor with impressive stage and film credits who was best remembered for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86 years old.
Stewart and his “Star Trek: TNG” co-stars brought their characters to the big screen for several films before the “Star Trek” film franchise was rebooted by J.J. Abrams with characters from the original series.
In the high-profile “X-Men” film franchise, Stewart played Professor Xavier, with his good friend Ian McKellen playing the villain Magneto.
Stewart most recently appeared in the 2015 film “Match,” based on the play by Stephen Belber, in which the actor played a vain, flamboyant dance instructor, and – in a very different style – in the horror-thriller “Green Room,” in which he played the leader of a band of neo-Nazis. He also starred in the Starz series “Blunt Talk”, about a substance-abusing English newscaster who moves to LA to host a talk show. (Diversity Said of “Blunt Talk”, “Stewart shows himself to be an extremely good sport, relishing both the incongruity of playing such a role and the lack of programs in every scene for an actor in his mid-70s.”)
In a 2008 profile describing Stewart’s return to his roots in classical theater by starring in a production of “Macbeth,” The New York Times pithily referenced the two different paths the actor has taken in his career in its mash-up headline: “Boldly Go Where Shakespeare Calls.”
It’s hard to emphasize how dramatically Stewart’s life changed when he began presenting on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in 1987. Before that he had been a mainstay of the Royal Shakespeare Company for two decades. He took time out for some film and television work, but remained busy in over two dozen RSC stage productions, including: Astrov in “Uncle Vanya” in 1974, Oberon in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1977, Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” in 1978, and the title role in “Titus Andronicus” in 1981.
Stewart played Picard during the 1987–1994 run of “Star Trek: TNG” and then went on to play Picard in “Star Trek: Generations” (in which he appeared with William Shatner), “Star Trek: First Contact,” “Star Trek: Insurrection” and “Star Trek: Nemesis.” He played Professor Xavier in “X-Men” (2000), “X-Men 2,” “X-Men: The Last Stand,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “The Wolverine” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
Assessing Stewart’s contribution to “Star Trek: TNG”, The New York Times said, “With his tough but fair authority and aura of seriousness of purpose, Mr. Stewart made Captain Jean-Luc Picard the moral center of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ over seven seasons, helping to keep it from slipping into camp or self-parody. Hollywood embraced him, and he embraced Hollywood.”
In general, Stewart had a good sense of humor about his relationship with popular culture, never publicly displaying the anger that Shatner and Leonard Nimoy sometimes displayed. He voiced appearances on “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy” and “American Dad” and showed a desire to move into comedy, playing a comically scheming waiter in Steve Martin’s 1991 “L.A. Story” and King Richard in Mel Brooks’ 1993 “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and hosting “Saturday Night Live” in 1994. In a very different way, he was the best. the 1995 gay comedy “Jeffrey”; The New York Times said Stewart “has some great lines and delivers them with a dignified brio that is only heightened when he wears a fuchsia beret, the uniform of an anti-gay group called the Pink Panthers.” The actor would later serve as the narrator for Seth MacFarlane’s horror comedy “Ted” and its sequel, and MacFarlane was also executive producer of “Blunt Talk”.
Stewart also continued her stage work during “Star Trek: TNG”, appearing in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Played the role of George. at the Young Vic in 1987 (he returned to the role at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 2001) and repeatedly appeared in seasonal stagings in Los Angeles and on Broadway of a one-man version of “A Christmas Carol”, which he adapted himself from the original Dickens.
After “TNG” ended, Stewart ramped up his theater work. He appeared as Prospero in “The Tempest” on Broadway in 1996, played the title role in a “photo-negative” staging of “Othello” at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. in 1997, and returned to Broadway in 2000 to star in “The Ride Down Mount Morgan.” In Britain, his work on the boards of “Antony and Cleopatra,” starring roles in “The Tempest” and a soon-to-be triumph in “Macbeth” won over critics who had panned him years earlier when he stepped into the outer space version of American television. The production of “Macbeth,” which eventually ran for a limited run on Broadway in 2008, “prompted several British newspaper critics to declare it the ‘Macbeth’ of a lifetime that they had ever seen,” The New York Times wrote, citing several respected critics. Also in 2008, Stewart played Claudius in a production of “Hamlet” starring David Tennant, earning Stewart an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Stewart had a fruitful collaboration with McKellen. In addition to starring as rivals in the “X-Men” movies, during the filming of which they developed a close friendship, the pair appeared in “Waiting for Godot” on the West End in 2009 and the Beckett play and another existentialist classic, Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” on Broadway in 2014.
The actor made his first cinematic forays into fantasy and science fiction with 1981’s “Excalibur,” based on John Boorman’s Arthurian legend, in which Stewart played Leondegrance, and director David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” in which he played Gurney Halleck, a top official of the Atreides household who is a confidant of Paul (Kyle MacLachlan). Becomes a lieutenant.
Earlier, on British television, he starred in the 1975 BBC miniseries “North and South”, an adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel, and then played Sejanus in “I, Claudius”. He starred as a psychiatrist in a hospital in the BBC’s “Maybury” from 1981–83.
Patrick Hawes Stewart was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, acted with various amateur drama societies in the area as a youth and left school at the age of 15. He took a job as a newspaper reporter but ultimately chose acting over journalism. His hair fell out at the age of 18.
Stewart began his acting career at the Library Theater in Manchester, after which he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966.
The actor lent his voice to several videogames related to the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” franchises.
He was married three times, first to choreographer Sheila Faulkner, second to “Star Trek: The Next Generation” producer Wendy Neuse.
Survivors include third wife Sunny Ozell, whom he married in 2013 in a ceremony presided over by Ian McKellen, as well as a daughter, Sophie Stewart, and son, actor Daniel Stewart, both from her marriage to Faulkner.