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Acclaimed Actor Patrick Stewart Dies at 86

The English star was best known for his work in the ‘Star Trek’ and ‘X-Men’ franchises

Associated Press

Published October 29, 2026

patrick stewart in a white shirt with the city of los angeles in the background

Patrick Stewart, one of the most beloved actors of his generation, has died. He was 86.

Paul Harris/Getty Images

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.

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“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today,” Hugh Jackman, a frequent Stewart co-star in the X-Men universe, said on social media. “And, in my book, a tremendous friend and man. I learned so much from him. I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.”

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 received some of the best reviews of his career when he finally tackled Macbeth. 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

a head shot of patrick stewart as capt. jean-luc picard in star trek: the next generation

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was one of Stewart's most popular roles.

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.

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“I found the stage a very safe place to be,” Stewart told AARP in 2014. “Because of the chaos in my life, I loved the certainty.”

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 become 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.

halle berry, patrick stewart, hugh jackman and ian mckellen portrayed as their x-men characters lined up in a row

Stewart's Professor Charles Xavier (in the wheelchair) was a key part of the "X-Men" franchise, including 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand." His costars included Halle Berry, left, Hugh Jackman and Ian McKellen.

Over the years, Stewart said, the distinction between actor and character nearly disappeared. “The line that separated Jean-Luc Picard and Patrick Stewart was getting thinner and thinner,” he told AARP in 2020. “I was he and he was me.”

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 playing 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.

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 himself 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.

Stewart acknowledged that he hadn’t always been so playful. During the early years of Star Trek, he once scolded his castmates for goofing around. “We’re not here to have fun,” he recalled telling them. Years later, he told AARP, “I’m continually reminded what a fool I was.”

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

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