Patrick Stewart, the British actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has died aged 86. He was also Professor X in the X-Men films. His spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, said he died at his Los Angeles home on Wednesday night.
A statement shared by Novak said Patrick Stewart died after a “short and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia.” He kept working into his 80s and is set to appear as Professor X again in Marvel’s upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Tributes for Patrick Stewart from Star Trek and Marvel
William Shatner, who led the original Star Trek series, called Stewart “a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor” who “brought intelligence, grace, and a deep sense of humanity to everything he did.” Marvel also issued condolences, remembering him as a “singular talent, a generous collaborator, and a true gentleman.”
The Next Generation ran from 1987 to 1994 and led to several films. Later, Stewart returned to the role in Star Trek: Picard, which ran from 2020 to 2023. His order “Make it so” became the line most associated with the character.
At first, he was confused about why producers would cast “a middle-aged bald English Shakespearean actor” as captain of the USS Enterprise. Over seven seasons, however, he said the line between himself and Picard became “thinner and thinner, until it was impossible for me to know where he left off and I began.”
From the Royal Shakespeare Company to Professor X
Stewart was born in 1940 in Mirfield, a Yorkshire town in northern England, to a textile worker mother and a soldier father. He acted in local youth theatre as a child. Before turning professional, he briefly worked as a journalist and then as a furniture salesman.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and stayed until 1982, taking leading roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and The Winter’s Tale. He went on to win three Laurence Olivier awards, the most recent in 2009 for playing Claudius in Hamlet.
The 2000 film X-Men cast him as Professor X opposite Ian McKellen as Magneto. The two became close friends. McKellen later officiated Stewart’s 2013 wedding to singer and songwriter Sunny Ozell. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for services to drama in 2010. He called the honour “the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”
For more than 20 years he also voiced a crude CIA official in Seth MacFarlane’s animated series American Dad, a role that played against his stage reputation.
Patrick Stewart in video games
Players know Stewart’s voice from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. He voiced Emperor Uriel Septim VII, whose escape through the player’s prison cell opens the 2006 game. Bethesda’s 2025 remaster kept his original performance. He also voiced Zobek in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and narrated the story between its chapters.
Acting as a refuge
Stewart was married twice before Ozell. His first marriage, to actress Sheila Falconer in 1966, produced a daughter and a son. He later married producer Wendy Neuss in 2000. He and Ozell lived together in Los Angeles at the time of his death.
Asked by AARP in 2024 what advice he had for young actors, he said: “You must believe in yourself, and you must be brave. Take risks. Don’t just play safe.”
He also wrote about the domestic violence he lived through as a child. In a 2009 piece for The Guardian, he said: “I managed to find my own refuge in acting. The stage was a far safer place for me than anything I had to live through at home.”