Sir Patrick Stewart, the Shakespearean actor who became Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films, has died aged 86, The Guardian reported.
He died on Wednesday 28 October, US time, at his home in Los Angeles, after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, according to his longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, as reported by The Guardian.
“He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all,” Bush Novak said in a statement.
He was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, England, according to The Guardian.
Stewart was 47 when he was cast as Picard. Star Trek: The Next Generation ran from 1987 to 1994, 176 episodes over seven seasons, ABC News reported. He played the captain in four films, Generations (1994), First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002), and returned for Star Trek: Picard, which ran from 2020 to 2023, according to The Guardian.
ABC News quoted a line from his memoir about how it began: “I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail”.
From 2000 he also played Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films, seven in all, and he reprises the role in Avengers: Doomsday, due in December 2026, The Guardian reported. ABC News described Doomsday as his final film role.
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The Stage Came First
Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, according to The Guardian. His roles with the company included Mark Antony, Henry IV, Shylock and Oberon, ABC News reported.
His television debut came in 1967, as a fireman in Coronation Street, according to ABC News.
He won two Olivier awards, for Antony and Cleopatra in 1979 and for Hamlet in 2009, when he played Claudius opposite David Tennant, ABC News reported. He also won a Grammy in 1996 for narrating Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf, and was nominated for a Tony and four Emmys, according to The Guardian.
A Hard Start in Mirfield
The house he grew up in had no running hot water, The Guardian reported, and an outdoor toilet, according to ABC News. His father was violent towards his mother, and Stewart later worked with the domestic abuse charity Refuge, ABC News reported.
Shakespeare found him early. A teacher gave him the part of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice when he was 12, according to The Guardian. He wrote about his early life in his 2023 memoir, Making It So, the paper reported.
The Tributes
Ian McKellen, writing on social media, called him “the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic”, The Guardian reported.
“We lost one of the greats of stage and screen today,” Hugh Jackman wrote on social media, according to ABC News.
William Shatner wrote on social media, The Guardian reported: “Captain Picard stood for the best of us, and so did the man who played him.”
“Sir Patrick brought Professor Charles Xavier to life with extraordinary grace, intelligence, and humanity, defining the character for generations of fans, from X-Men to Logan to Avengers: Doomsday,” Marvel Studios said in a statement, according to ABC News.
The Royal Shakespeare Company paid its own tribute, ABC News reported: “A colossus of both stage and screen and one of the finest classical Shakespearean actors of his generation.”
A Yorkshireman to the End
Stewart was a lifelong Huddersfield Town supporter, The Guardian reported. He was married three times, and his wife at his death was the jazz musician Sunny Ozell, whom he married in 2013, according to the paper.
Fans laid flowers on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, ABC News reported.
On 24 October, wrp reported the death of Tom Skerritt, the star of Alien, Top Gun and Picket Fences, aged 93. More tributes and profiles are in our Celebrity Life archive.
Sources: The Guardian, “Patrick Stewart, Star Trek actor and acclaimed thespian, dies aged 86”, 30 October 2026 (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/oct/29/patrick-stewart-dead); ABC News, “From Oberon to Picard and Professor X: Sir Patrick Stewart remembered”, 30 October 2026 (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-30/sir-patrick-stewart-dies-aged-86-tributes-obit/107326708)
Photo: Urbantog, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Patrick Stewart photographed in September 2009.
