Patrick Stewart, who rose from poverty in England to become an accomplished Shakespearean stage actor and then achieved global stardom in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has died at the age of 86.<\/p>\n
Stewart, knighted in 2010 by Queen Elizabeth for his contributions to drama, died at his home in Los Angeles, according to a statement on \u200chis X account.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe announce with great sorrow the passing of Patrick Stewart yesterday at his home in Los Angeles, in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer\u2019s disease and Lewy Body Dementia,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Stewart became an \u200bactor at age 18 and gained acclaim on the stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company beginning in the 1960s. <\/p>\n
But it was not until after he was hired at age 47 for Star Trek: The Next Generation \u2013 a TV series that ran from 1987 to 1994 as a sequel to the original 1960s Star Trek \u2013 that he gained mainstream fame, acting into his 80s.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake it so,\u201d his character Jean-Luc Picard often said, instructing a subordinate to carry out a command, or sometimes deploying the similar catchphrase, \u201cEngage\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was a role he had \u200bdebated even taking after his long-time friend and fellow Shakespearean actor Ian McKellen advised him to spurn Star Trek and remain in theatre. <\/p>\n
Stewart did take the role, becoming both a fan favourite and an indispensable part of a lucrative sci-fi franchise, playing Picard not only in 176 episodes \u2060over seven seasons of that series but also in several Star Trek films and in the later streaming series, Star Trek: Picard, that began airing in 2020 when he was 79.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the seven seasons \u200cof \u200cTNG (The \u200bNext Generation) went by, the distinction between Jean-Luc Picard and Patrick Stewart became thinner and thinner, until it was impossible for me to know where he left off and I began. So much of what I believed and felt went into that show,\u201d Stewart told the Guardian newspaper in 2022.<\/p>\n
Stewart also initially balked at being cast as the wheelchair-using \u2060mutant Professor X in the X-Men movies, based on the popular Marvel comic book character.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Look, \u200bI know this isn\u2019t science fiction, but it\u2019s fantasy, and I\u2019ve done that\u2019. But they persuaded me that \u200bit wouldn\u2019t be like Star Trek, so I did it. And yet again I was proved wrong,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n
He became a critical part of another big-money franchise starting with the first entry X-Men in 2000 and followed by several more.<\/p>\n
Stewart was born on July 13th, 1940, in the English town \u200bof Mirfield in Yorkshire. <\/p>\n
He was raised in poverty, with a father who he said returned from the second World War an alcoholic who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and physically abused Stewart\u2019s mother. <\/p>\n
Stewart recalled putting his \u2060body between his father and mother to try to protect her.<\/p>\n
As a child, he said, \u2060acting became a \u201csafe space\u201d after a schoolteacher introduced him to Shakespeare \u2013 \u200bspecifically The Merchant of Venice \u2013 during a class when he was 12. <\/p>\n
He started losing his hair at age 17 and was bald by 19. He was embarrassed at the time, but eventually embraced it.<\/p>\n
Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry, presented a hopeful vision of the future, with humankind venturing into the cosmos in spaceships exceeding the speed of light and encountering alien races. <\/p>\n
The enduring popularity of the original series and the success of spin-off films prompted Roddenberry to create The Next Generation sequel series.<\/p>\n
The Picard character was the opposite of the swashbuckling and sometimes unintentionally buffoonish Captain James T Kirk, played by William Shatner, of the original series \u2013 envisioned as more cerebral and disciplined, though sometimes coming across as stuffy, humourless, or self-important.<\/p>\n
Stewart recalled being a little bit too serious toward his castmates early on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell the story of calling a meeting of my principal fellow cast members and telling them that I thought we were not disciplined enough, that we should not be fooling about on the set as much as we \u200cwere but taking everything seriously,\u201d Stewart told the New \u2060Yorker in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd one of the cast members said, \u2018Oh, come on, Patrick, we\u2019ve got to have some fun\u2019. And I thumped the chair and said, \u2018We are not here to have fun\u2019 \u2013 which they have never let me forget. They taught me so much about loosening up and being freer,\u201d Stewart added.<\/p>\n
He also felt the series improved as it went along, faulting his own portrayal \u200cof Picard in the first two seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found it lacking intimacy. It was very authoritative, but there were few other qualities in him,\u201d Stewart said, adding that his work got better in subsequent seasons.<\/p>\n
In fact, the finest work for the entire cast may have \u200bbeen the two-part, time-bending series finale.<\/p>\n
He was knighted by the queen at Buckingham Palace in 2010. He told reporters that \u200bhis heroes were British actors Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, who also had been knighted, adding that being \u201cin that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stewart was married three times and had two children. His third marriage, in 2013, was to American musician Sunny Ozell. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Stewart, who rose from poverty in England to become an accomplished Shakespearean stage actor and then achieved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-669267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}