The Bigger Picture: Remembering Sir Patrick Stewart

July 13, 1940 - October 28, 2026

Actor Sir Patrick Stewart, who died aged 86, bestrode vast stages and deep space, lauded for both his Shakespeare and sci-fi. An established stage and film actor in the UK, his command of the starship Enterprise in the Star Trek TV spinoff The Next Generation was a mid-career genre shift.

From 1987, he played the stoic Captain Jean-Luc Picard for seven series and four movies. Light years later came streaming series Star Trek: Picard. To another audience, he is Professor X of the mega-hit X-Men franchise. Hollywood blockbusters were a distant galaxy for a lad born in industrial west Yorkshire to a family riven by domestic violence.

A local arts council scholarship funded his entry at 17 to the Bristol Old Vic drama school; his professional career began at 18. There were early stints on Coronation Street and prestige TV like I, Claudius before leading roles in classic Brit theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Here, he’s the Bard himself in Edward Bond’s Bingo, at London’s Young Vic, in 2012. His declaiming was heard from the West End to Broadway – in 2008, his Macbeth won a Tony nomination. But it wasn’t all Pinter and Prospero: Stewart could also do funny, appearing in The Simpsons and Sesame Street. One of his last roles before he succumbed to dementia was voicing a wise old ram in The Sheep Detectives.