Patrick Stewart of ‘Star Trek’ And ‘X-Men’ Fame Dies At Age 86

Patrick Stewart, the classically-trained stage actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek” franchise and Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” films, has died at age eighty-six (86). He died on Wednesday (28th October, 2026) in Los Angeles, California, following what Spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak described as “a brief and poignant journey” with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body Dementia.

Besides playing everyone from Claudius to Macbeth onstage, 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.

After completing a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1987, an interesting offer came along for Stewart. “I found myself in Hollywood shooting a syndicated science fiction series, which I was assured would fail.” The series did not fail. Thanks to Stewart’s rich baritone and noble bearing, the “Star Trek” franchise ran for seven (7) years, 178 episodes and produced four (4) feature films. He was known for his slogan “Make it so.”

His adoration for Shakespeare would serve him well when he began to play 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 later wrote in his memoir.

Stewart was first introduced as the character Xavier in the original X-Men trilogy, appearing in three (3) films from 2000 to 2006. He later returned in four (4) 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 (2) 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.)

He married Brooklyn songwriter and singer, Sunny Ozell, in 2013, with the actor’s “X-Men” co-star Ian McKellen officiating the wedding. Stewart later tweeted a photo of the newlyweds in a ball pit.

He is also survived by two (2) children, a daughter, Sophia, and a son, Daniel.

More on this as it becomes available. 

[Source: The Associated Press]

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