Patrick Stewart, stage giant also of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘X-Men’ fame, dies at 86

Patrick Stew­art, the clas­si­cal­ly trained stage ac­tor who scaled the Shake­speare­an canon and added grav­i­tas to a “Star Trek” fran­chise and the “X-Men” films, has died. He was 86.

Stew­art died Wednes­day in Los An­ge­les, fol­low­ing “a brief and poignant jour­ney” with Alzheimer’s dis­ease and Lewy Body De­men­tia, spokesper­son Kel­ly Bush No­vak said.

While best known as Pro­fes­sor Charles Xavier and Cap­tain Jean-Luc Pi­card from the “X-Men” and “Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion” se­ries and films, re­spec­tive­ly, Stew­art spent more of his ca­reer on­stage than in the X-Man­sion or on the USS En­ter­prise.

Be­sides play­ing every­one from Claudius to Mac­beth, he of­ten per­formed a one-man ren­di­tion of “A Christ­mas Car­ol” and did West End and Broad­way runs of Harold Pin­ter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beck­ett’s “Wait­ing for Godot” in reper­toire with bud­dy Ian McK­ellen.

He achieved some of the best re­views of his ca­reer when he fi­nal­ly tack­led Mac­beth for the first time. The pro­duc­tion, un­der the di­rec­tion of Ru­pert Goold, de­buted in May 2007 at Eng­land’s Chich­ester Fes­ti­val The­atre, switched to Lon­don’s West End and then moved to the Brook­lyn Acad­e­my of Mu­sic be­fore trans­fer­ring to Broad­way in 2008.

Stew­art’s per­for­mance earned him his sole Tony Award nom­i­na­tion. The Times of Lon­don said his Mac­beth was “an en­thralling cre­ation of frailty, ap­petite, ego­tism and grim hu­mor.” The Dai­ly Tele­graph said he had turned in “a tru­ly great per­for­mance” and The New York Times said it was “a must-see.”

“Near­ly 50 years I’ve wait­ed,” Stew­art told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in 2008. “I learned it when I was 14. I mem­o­rized all the so­lil­o­quies just be­cause I thought they were great. And they stuck, so I didn’t have to learn those bits of the play, which is a bless­ing, be­cause learn­ing lines has now be­come the one curse of this job.”

Star­ship com­man­der grew up with­out a toi­let

Raised in Mir­field in York­shire, a work­ing class cor­ner of north­ern Eng­land, the fu­ture 24th cen­tu­ry com­man­der of a star­ship grew up with­out a bath­room in his house.

Stew­art joined an am­a­teur dra­ma group at 12 and mem­o­rized Shake­speare for fun as a teen. He won a schol­ar­ship to the Bris­tol Old Vic The­atre School, launch­ing a ca­reer as a char­ac­ter ac­tor.

He was bald since he was 19 — alope­cia runs in his fam­i­ly.

His fa­ther, a for­mer reg­i­men­tal sergeant ma­jor in the British Army, was prone to out­bursts of “re­peat­ed vi­o­lence against my moth­er,” as Stew­art wrote in a news­pa­per piece. “Vi­o­lence is al­ways a choice a man makes and he alone is re­spon­si­ble for it.”

In his mem­oir, “Mak­ing It So,” Stew­art wrote about how he and his old­er broth­er Trevor braced for the nights when their dad came home drunk and an­gry, and at­tacked their moth­er. “Some­times it was with an open hand, oth­er times a closed fist. Al­ways he aimed for her head.”

The son would lat­er be­came a pa­tron for Refuge, an or­ga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides shel­ter for do­mes­tic abuse vic­tims.

Lov­ing Shake­speare proved fruit­ful as Capt. Pi­card

“The stage would prove to be a safe space, a refuge from re­al life in which I could in­hab­it an­oth­er per­son, liv­ing in an­oth­er place and time,” he would write.

Stew­art was ac­cept­ed in­to the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and stayed for 14 years, play­ing every­thing from Mark An­tho­ny to Hen­ry IV to Shy­lock to Oberon. “Peo­ple who were not in the com­pa­ny would say to me, ‘Give it a break. Why don’t you go some­where else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?‘” he told the AP. “Tel­ly?”

Stew­art even­tu­al­ly left to look for more var­ied work, in­clud­ing the 1981 film “Ex­cal­ibur.” He had just done a pro­duc­tion of “Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf?” in 1987 when an in­ter­est­ing of­fer came along. “I found my­self in Hol­ly­wood shoot­ing a syn­di­cat­ed sci­ence fic­tion se­ries, which I was as­sured would fail.”

It didn’t, of course. Thanks to Stew­art’s rich bari­tone and no­ble bear­ing, the “Star Trek” fran­chise ran for sev­en years, 178 episodes and pro­duced four fea­ture films. He was known for his slo­gan “Make it so.”

His ado­ra­tion for Shake­speare would serve him well when he be­gan to play Jean-Luc Pi­card, a 24th cen­tu­ry star­ship com­man­der.

“There is a for­mal­i­ty to the way they speak and com­port them­selves that re­mind me of nu­mer­ous Shake­speare­an sit­u­a­tions I’d been in on­stage. I should play Jean Luc, I re­al­ized, as if he were a char­ac­ter in ‘Hen­ry IV,’ which is about brave men,” Stew­art wrote in his mem­oir.

De­spite the Borg and Klin­gons, Stew­art still man­aged to make room for blank verse. He es­tab­lished the Para­mount Shake­speare Com­pa­ny, a work­shop on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings for any ac­tor in­ter­est­ed. (Stew­art re­vis­it­ed Pi­card in the TV se­ries “Star Trek: Pi­card.”)

The show gave him a high­er vis­i­bil­i­ty, which led to more work, in­clud­ing roles in the films “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry,” “L.A. Sto­ry” and Broad­way, where he starred in “The Tem­pest,” “The Care­tak­er” and David Mamet’s “A Life in the The­ater.” He was knight­ed by Queen Eliz­a­beth II in June 2010. Stew­art was al­so an am­bas­sador for the In­ter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee.

A brave and com­mand­ing per­sona. But sexy?

In Ju­ly 1992, he and su­per­mod­el Cindy Craw­ford were on the cov­er of TV Guide’s “Top Turn-Ons,” based on a read­ers’ poll. In his mem­oir, Stew­art wrote: “Ab­surd.”

Stew­art was first in­tro­duced as the char­ac­ter Xavier in the orig­i­nal X-Men tril­o­gy, ap­pear­ing in three films from 2000 to 2006. He lat­er re­turned in four more movies be­fore Pro­fes­sor X’s death in 2017’s “Lo­gan.” He reap­peared in “Doc­tor Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness” in 2022.

He al­so showed off his comedic chops aboard Seth Mac­Far­lane’s Starz show “Blunt Talk” for two se­ries and voiced Poop in “The Emo­ji Movie.” He made ap­pear­ances on “Ro­bot Chick­en,” “Fu­tu­ra­ma” and “The Simp­sons” (in one episode, Homer los­es his hair, and Stew­art tells him it’s great to be bald.)

Lat­er in life, he proved In­ter­net-savvy and found new fans with his hu­mor, pos­ing in a bath in a lob­ster suit and trig­ger­ing memes when he post­ed a pho­to of him pick­ing ap­ples. When he was mis­tak­en­ly out­ed as gay by a British news­pa­per, he said it was a nice change. “At least I didn’t wake up to the in­ter­net telling me I was dead again,” he tweet­ed.

He mar­ried Brook­lyn song­writer and singer Sun­ny Ozell in 2013, with the ac­tor’s “X-Men” co-star McK­ellen of­fi­ci­at­ing. Stew­art lat­er tweet­ed a pho­to of the new­ly­weds in a ball pit.

He al­so is sur­vived by two chil­dren, a daugh­ter, Sophia, and a son, Daniel.