Patrick Stewart, the British actor who became Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men, has died aged 86.
His spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, confirmed that he died in Los Angeles on Wednesday 28 October. His death was announced on 29 October.
Stewart played Picard through seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation before taking the Enterprise captain into feature films, beginning with Generations in 1994. He later returned to the character in Star Trek: Picard, giving audiences another chapter with one of television’s most familiar commanders.
As Xavier, he brought a different kind of authority to the X-Men films. His performance opposite Hugh Jackman in Logan showed the vulnerability beneath the professor’s imposing presence. “I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days,” Jackman wrote in tribute.
The screen fame never displaced his stage work. A Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, Stewart earned a Tony nomination for Macbeth and performed Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land alongside Ian McKellen. His solo A Christmas Carol was another showcase for that unmistakable voice.
He could also puncture his own gravitas, from Blunt Talk to American Dad. Knighted in 2010, Stewart built a career that stretched well beyond the bridge of the Enterprise.
