Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek” and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died. Stewart died on Wednesday in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak said in a statement on Thursday. Although best known for his film and television roles, Stewart spent much of his career onstage, performing Shakespeare and other classics.
His career included performances as Claudius and Macbeth, a one-man adaptation of “A Christmas Carol”, and West End and Broadway productions of Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” alongside longtime friend Ian McKellen. Stewart earned some of the best reviews of his career for his 2007 portrayal of Macbeth, including his only Tony Award nomination. The Times of London described his Macbeth performance as “an enthralling creation of frailty, appetite, egotism and grim humour”.
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.” Raised in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, a working-class corner of northern England, the future 24th-century commander of a starship grew up without a bathroom in his house. He joined an amateur drama group at 12 and, as a teenager, memorised Shakespeare for fun.
A scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School helped launch his acting career. Stewart, who developed alopecia at a young age, had been bald since he was 19. His childhood was also marked by domestic violence.
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. Stewart spent 14 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, playing everyone from Mark Antony and Henry IV to Shylock and Oberon. Why don’t you go somewhere else?’ And I would say, ‘To do what?'” he told the AP.
In 1987, shortly after performing in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, he was offered a role in a science fiction series. But “Star Trek: The Next Generation” ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes. Stewart became known worldwide as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, whose command, “Make it so”, became one of the show’s best-known lines.
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