The Actor Who Thought Star Trek Would Fail
Sir Patrick Stewart died on October 28, 2026, at 86. A statement posted to his Instagram said he died at his home in Los Angeles, in the care of his wife, Sunny. The statement said he had been living with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia.
For many of us, he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the calm voice at the center of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But the road to the captain's chair started a long way from space.
A boy from Mirfield
Stewart was born on July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He started at Mirfield Secondary Modern School at 11 and left at 15. He and his friend Brian Blessed later won grants to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. His first professional stage appearance came in 1959, at the Theatre Royal in Bristol, when he was about 18.
Sixteen years of Shakespeare
In 1966 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he stayed until 1982. He appeared in more than 60 of its productions. During those years he also played Sejanus in the BBC series I, Claudius (1976). In 1979 he won an Olivier Award for Antony and Cleopatra, and he won another in 2008 for playing Claudius in Hamlet.
On film, he appeared in Excalibur (1981) and as Gurney Halleck in Dune (1984). He was a respected stage actor, and he was almost unknown in America.
The captain's chair
In the mid-1980s, a producer named Robert Justman saw Stewart at a literary reading at UCLA, and that led to the part of Captain Picard. Here is the part that surprises people. Stewart was reluctant to sign a six-year contract, because he expected the show to fail.
There was also a question about his hair, or lack of it. Wikipedia quotes Gene Roddenberry's answer: "In the 24th century, they wouldn't care."
Star Trek: The Next Generation ran from 1987 to 1994. Stewart played Picard in four feature films, from 1994 to 2002, and again in Star Trek: Picard from 2020 to 2023.
Professor X and more
He played Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films from 2000 to 2017. He was also Xavier in a 2022 Doctor Strange film. He had a gift for comedy too, in L.A. Story (1991) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and he earned Emmy nominations for Frasier and Extras.
One of his best-known stage works was a one-man version of A Christmas Carol, in which he played more than 40 characters. It reached Broadway in 1991 and returned to the stage in later years.
He was appointed OBE in 2001, and he was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to drama.
What I'll remember
I keep thinking about the contract he almost refused. A man who expected to fail ended up on screens in millions of homes every week for seven years, and he made a generation believe the future might be thoughtful and kind.
Rest in peace, Captain.
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