Patrick Stewart dies — Captain Picard and Professor Xavier

The actor died at his home in Los Angeles

British actor Patrick Stewart, known for his roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men, has died at the age of 86. The Hollywood Reporter magazine was the first to report his death. According to the actor's longtime representative Kelly Bush Novak, Stewart died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after a 'brief and touching journey' with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia. In a statement published on the actor's social media, his family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Alzheimer's disease research fund at Johns Hopkins University. 'He was in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayers, tears and laughter', the family's statement said.

From the Shakespearean stage to the captain's bridge

Stewart was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, Yorkshire, graduated from the Bristol Old Vic theatre school, and at 26 joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. By the late 1980s he had decades of classical stage work behind him when producer Robert Justman, searching for a successor to William Shatner, saw Stewart giving a lecture on Shakespeare in Los Angeles and offered him the role of Picard in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Franchise creator Gene Roddenberry initially did not want a bald Briton as the face of the new show, but Stewart signed a six-year contract, believing the series would not last even one season. 'Everyone I spoke to — agents, directors, writers, other actors — said: don't worry about the six years, you'll be lucky if you make it through the first,' The Hollywood Reporter quoted him as saying. The series ran for seven seasons until 1994, after which four feature films were released. In 2000, Stewart played Xavier in X-Men, with Ian McKellen as his co-star in the role of Magneto; in total he appeared in seven films of the franchise, including Logan in 2017. 'I admired both of them immensely for their morality, kindness, sensitivity and compassion,' the actor said of Picard and Xavier.

Theatre remained with him all his life

Despite his Hollywood fame, Stewart spent a significant part of his career on the theatre stage. His roles ranged from Claudius to Macbeth; for years he performed a one-man version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol on Broadway, playing all 40 characters, and in 2007 he played Macbeth for the first time — critic Nicholas de Jongh called that production 'the best Macbeth I have ever seen'. Together with his longtime friend Ian McKellen he appeared on West End and Broadway stages in Pinter's No Man's Land and Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In 2010, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to drama, and in 2020 Stewart returned to the role of Picard in the series Star Trek: Picard, continuing to act into his eighties.