Sir Patrick Stewart, whose stage career took him from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the West End and Broadway, has died at the age of 86. His family said he died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday 28 October.
The news was announced on his social media accounts on Thursday evening. In the statement his family said he had died in the care of his wife, Sunny, "following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia". His longtime spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, confirmed the death to The Hollywood Reporter.
"He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayers, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to all of us," the statement read. "We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace."
A son of Mirfield, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and became one of its mainstays, appearing in more than 40 of its productions. He won his first Olivier Award in 1979, for Antony and Cleopatra, and was already an established classical actor when, in 1987, he was cast as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seven seasons on the Enterprise made him a global star, and he later added Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films.
Screen fame never drew him away from the theatre for long. His solo adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, in which he played more than 40 characters, went from Broadway to London and brought him a second Olivier. In 2007 he took the title role in Rupert Goold's Macbeth, which opened in the Minerva at Chichester Festival Theatre before transferring to the Gielgud Theatre. It won him the Evening Standard award for Best Actor, and when the production reached Broadway's Lyceum Theatre in 2008 it brought him a Tony Award nomination.
A year later he was back with the RSC as Claudius opposite David Tennant's Hamlet. The production moved to the Novello Theatre, and the performance won him his third Olivier Award in 2009. In 2009 he and Ian McKellen also played Vladimir and Estragon in Sean Mathias's production of Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The pair later took Godot to Broadway in repertory with Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, which they brought to the West End in 2016.
His other Broadway and West End appearances included The Caretaker, A Life in the Theatre, The Master Builder, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. He was knighted for services to drama in 2010.
Stewart married the singer Sunny Ozell in 2013; Ian McKellen officiated. His family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions go to the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Fund or to the Alzheimer's Foundation of America's Caregiver Resources.
Tributes from the RSC
The Royal Shakespeare Company, where Stewart was an Honorary Associate Artist, paid tribute to him on Thursday night. Its Co-Artistic Directors, Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, called him "a colossus of both stage and screen and one of the finest classical Shakespearean actors of his generation". They recalled that he was a core member of the company from 1966 to 1982, rising from supporting roles in Sir Peter Hall's resident ensemble to leads that included Shylock, Prospero, Macbeth, Antony, Claudius and Henry IV. "His contribution to our company and to our industry is beyond measure," they said.
Former RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran looked back on Stewart's return to the company in 2006, when he played Antony and Prospero in the same season and went on to double Claudius and the Ghost in Hamlet. "Patrick Stewart created the best performance of Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra I have ever seen," Doran said. "Patrick was a true Shakespearian, and at heart (however much he flew round the galaxies in the Star Ship Enterprise) a theatre actor in his bones. I shall miss him greatly."
Lead photo: Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0, cropped.
