LOS ANGELES — Patrick Stewart has died. He was 86. Trained for the Shakespeare stage, he wound up holding two jobs known all over the world — Jean-Luc Picard on the Enterprise, and Professor Charles Xavier among the X-Men.
His family posted the announcement Thursday, a statement to Stewart’s official social media accounts saying he died a day earlier at home in Los Angeles. His wife, Sunny Ozell, was caring for him. The family spoke of a brief journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia — two diagnoses nobody outside the family appears to have known about. Reuters reported that Kelly Bush Novak, who had spoken for Stewart for years, confirmed it.
“We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday 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”
What followed was less a press release than a farewell. The family wrote of music playing, of prayer, tears and laughter around him at the end. They called him a son of Mirfield. He was born in the Yorkshire town on July 13, 1940, and the statement traced the road out of it — the Royal Shakespeare Company first, then six decades across Broadway, film and television.
The stage came first. For years, it was his whole working life. Stewart spent years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Then “Star Trek” came calling, late in the 1980s, and even that nearly did not happen. Gene Roddenberry, who created the franchise, did not want him playing Picard. Stewart recalled the fight years later. “There were weeks of fierce arguments, before [Roddenberry] stepped aside, which is extraordinary,” he told USA TODAY in 2023.
Roddenberry lost the argument. Viewers are still glad he did. For seven seasons, 1987 to 1994, he ran the Enterprise on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” “Make it so.” “Engage.” Nobody else sounded like that giving an order. Old age did not retire the character. He came back for “Star Trek: Picard,” three seasons that ended in 2023 with the old crew around him again.
Ask a filmgoer, though, and the answer is Xavier — the telepath he first played in “X-Men” back in 2000. He did not let the part go. Twenty years and more passed — “Logan” in 2017, a Marvel Cinematic Universe outing in 2022 — and he was still playing him. There is one appearance left. He is in “Avengers: Doomsday,” opening Dec. 18, and Marvel Studios says it will be his last time on screen.
In 2010 came a knighthood, from Queen Elizabeth II, for services to drama.
By Thursday evening the messages were piling up. Marvel Studios credited him with bringing Xavier to life “with extraordinary grace, intelligence, and humanity, defining the character for generations of fans.”
Ian McKellen knew him longest and perhaps best — Magneto to his Xavier, a friendship going back some 50 years to their Royal Shakespeare days. On Instagram, McKellen wrote that Stewart “wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.” His last line looked ahead, to a film neither man can promote together now: Stewart’s farewell performance in “Avengers: Doomsday” is yet to be seen.
Hugh Jackman, Wolverine in those same films, kept it short: “We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today.” William Shatner, who wore the captain’s chair before Stewart did, posted on X that his successor was “a friend, a colleague, and a magnificent actor.”
For a closing word, the family reached for Stewart’s own. They ended the statement with a line from “Making It So,” his 2023 memoir: “In the end, he feels the call of home, as do I.”
Ozell survives him, along with a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Sophia. The family does not want flowers. It asked instead for donations to the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s caregiver resources.
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