Patrick Stewart has died aged 86

Patrick Stewart has passed away at the age of 86, following a brief battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

Best known globally as Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise, he was also beloved on stage.

Having started out as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he performed in more than 60 productions, Stewart was a three-time Olivier Award winner and Tony Award nominee.

He won his first Olivier Award for his performance in Antony and Cleopatra in 1979 and received a second for playing Claudius in Hamlet.

His extensive stage credits also included Macbeth, for which he received a Tony Award nomination, as well as productions of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, opposite Ian McKellen. Other Broadway and West End appearances included The Caretaker, A Life in the Theatre, The Master Builder, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest.

Stewart earned acclaim for his solo adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in which he portrayed more than 40 characters. The production earned him an Olivier Award and a Drama Desk Award. It also earned him one of his four WhatsOnStage Awards, for which he has been nominated five times.

On television, Stewart became an international star playing Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran for seven series. He reprised the role in several films, beginning with Star Trek Generations in 1994, and returned to the character in Star Trek: Picard, which premiered in 2020. He also served as an executive producer on the latter series.

His other television credits included The Lion in Winter and Moby Dick, both of which earned him Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominations, as well as Hamlet, which brought a Golden Globe nomination. He received an Emmy nomination for his appearance on Ricky Gervais’s comedy series Extras and Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations for his role in the Starz series Blunt Talk.

Stewart’s film career encompassed seven installments of the X-Men franchise, in which he portrayed Professor Charles Xavier. His performance in Logan earned a Critics Choice Award nomination. His other screen credits included Steve Martin’s L.A. Story, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Conspiracy Theory, and Seth MacFarlane’s Ted and Ted 2, in which he served as narrator. His voice work extended to animated films including The Prince of Egypt and Chicken Little, as well as television series such as Family Guy and American Dad.

His survivors include his wife, Sunny Ozell, whom he married in a 2013 ceremony officiated by McKellen, as well as his children, Sophie Stewart and Daniel Stewart, from a previous marriage.