Patrick Stewart, whose voice carried Shakespeare at Stratford and orders on the bridge of a starship, has died. The British actor, 86, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles, the city he had long called home. He had been suffering from two forms of dementia, Alzheimer’s and the Lewy body type, and his long-time spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak called that last chapter “poignant” and brief, saying he spent it among family, friends and live music.
Television made him a household name as Jean-Luc Picard, the measured, book-loving captain of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Cinema gave him a second signature part as Professor X, the telepathic mentor Charles Xavier of the “X-Men” films. Yet he always returned to the theatre, from his early decades in the ensemble of the Royal Shakespeare Company to later work by Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Pinter and Beckett on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tributes poured in on Thursday. Ian McKellen, a friend since their RSC days and his on-screen rival in “X-Men”, recalled warning Stewart that a Hollywood TV job might swallow his stage career, and said audiences everywhere could be thankful he ignored the advice. McKellen also described him as a proud Yorkshireman who said exactly what he thought. LeVar Burton, who played engineer Geordi La Forge, called him family and joked that among all the knights and dames he had known, none was sillier at heart.
Away from the cameras he campaigned on women’s rights and spoke openly about the domestic violence he witnessed as a boy. With his wife Sunny he fostered rescue pit bulls and backed animal welfare campaigns against dog fighting.
After Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia ranks as the most widespread form of creeping cognitive decline, and the two illnesses often overlap. In Los Angeles, admirers laid flowers on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
