Patrick Stweart, the UK actor who achieved fame on stage and the silver screen and whose credits included the Star Trek and X-Men films, has died. He was 86.
A excerpt from a statement posted to Stewart’s Instagram account read: “We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday [October 28] at his home in Los Angeles, in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny, following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia.”
The statement added, “His sonorous voice and singular talent will forever be synonymous with indelible performances in every genre. He explored the human condition in all its poetic complexity and brought hope not only to the far reaches of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but into science fiction’s most iconic final frontier aboard the Starship Enterprise.”
Stewart was born in Mirfield in what is now West Yorkshire on July 13, 1940 to a textile worker and an Army sergeant major.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s and first appeared on Broadway in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1971. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for supporting role in Antony And Cleopatra in London’s West End in 1979, and would win his second in 2009 for portraying Claudius in Hamlet, a role that garnered a Tony Award nomination for the Broadway version.
Stewart’s first screen roles came in the 1970s and included I, Claudius, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. His most celebrated film work came when Stewart landed the role of the Starship Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard in the Star Trek: The Next Generation series that ran from 1987 to 1994. Stewart reprised the role in four features.
The innate decency of Picard appealed to Stewart, who appreciated the same sense of integrity in Charles Xavier, the wheelchair-bound leader of the X-Men franchise that saw him star from 2000 to 2017 in the core franchise and spin-offs like Logan, for which he earned a Critics Choice Awards supporting actor nomination.
Notable film credits included John Boorman’s celebrated 1981 fantasy epic Excalibur and Jeremy Saulnier’s 2015 psychological thriller Green Room, in which he played against type as the leader of a white supremacist group. His last credit was for voice work in Working Title’s whodunnit The Sheep Detectives, which opened this year.
Stewart reprised his role as Xavier in Marvel Studios’ upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, which is scheduled to open on December 18.
He married three times, most recently to the musician Sunny Ozell. He is survived by Ozell and his children Daniel and Sophia from his marriage to choreographer Sheila Falconer.
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