Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard and Professor X, has died at 86
The British actor died on Wednesday 28 October at his home in Los Angeles, his family said in a statement on his official X account. He had Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia. A Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, he played Jean-Luc Picard for nearly four decades.
Sir Patrick Stewart died on Wednesday 28 October at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. His family announced the death in a statement posted to the actor’s official X account, saying he died in the care of his wife, Sunny, after a brief struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
To a lot of people he was simply the captain. Jean-Luc Picard ran the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994, then across four films and, in his eighties, three seasons of Star Trek: Picard. To another generation he was Professor Charles Xavier, the calm centre of the X-Men films from 2000 onwards.
A son of Mirfield
He was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, into a working-class family. He made his professional stage debut in 1959 and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966. That is where the voice was built. Hollywood only borrowed it.
Television found him late. He was 47 when he was cast as Picard and barely known in America, and the studio was not at all sure about a bald Englishman in the captain’s chair. The show ran seven seasons.
He never left the theatre. Macbeth, Shylock, Prospero and Claudius came on both sides of the Atlantic, and his double act with Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land played London and New York. He was knighted in 2010 and published his memoir, Making It So, in 2023.
The crew says goodbye
It has been a hard week for the franchise. Walter Koenig, the original series’ Chekov, died on Sunday at 90, and the tributes to Stewart have come from both of the houses that made him famous, Starfleet and Xavier’s school, with Hugh Jackman, his Wolverine, among those paying tribute.
One goodbye is still to come. Stewart returns as Charles Xavier in Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday, which will now carry one of his last screen appearances.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to:
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) October 29, 2026
Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund https://t.co/luC5CdcWDy
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources https://t.co/zvNptfyuNd
Photo Credit: Tommy Garcia pic.twitter.com/XNncEVq56X
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), adapted by Tugadaily
