Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ Captain and ‘X-Men’ Superhero, Dies at 86

Patrick Stewart, best known for his roles as Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies has died. He was 86.

via: THR

Patrick Stewart, the sophisticated actor who brought a Shakespearean touch to Star Trek and X-Men as he made an otherworldly transformation from British stage veteran to sci-fi icon, has died. He was 86.

Stewart died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia,” longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak announced.

“He has been held in the warm embrace of family and friends, surrounded by live music, prayer, tears, laughter and the kind of profound emotion that only he could inspire after a lifetime of devotion to us all,” Bush Novak wrote. “We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace.”

In the late 1980s, Stewart had decades of classical theater work in England under his belt but was unfamiliar in America when he was given command of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Star Trek: The Next Generation producer Robert Justman happened upon a UCLA lecture featuring Stewart and witnessed him reading from Shakespeare in his trademark patrician style. Justman called the actor in for an audition against the wishes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who didn’t think a bald Brit could be the face of the new series.

After a contentious casting process, Stewart won over the famously persnickety Roddenberry and signed a long-term contract to play Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, thinking there was no way the show would last beyond one season.

“Every single person I spoke to — agents, directors, screenwriters, other actors — said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about six years. You’ll be lucky to make it through the first year,’ ” Stewart recalled in 2010. “Everybody felt it was madness to try to revive an iconic series like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy‘s Star Trek. So, on the basis of that advice, I signed the six-year contract.”

The Los Angeles Times referred to him as an “unknown British Shakespearean actor” in a story announcing his casting. Brent Spiner, who played the android Data on the show, fashioned a sign to go above Stewart’s dressing room that read in bright red, “WARNING: Unknown British Shakespearean Actor.”

Next Generation premiered in September 1987, two months after Stewart’s 47th birthday, and initially struggled to catch on with Star Trek fans, many of whom considered the new cast to be pretenders to the throne. But after ups and downs, the series soared to new heights in 1990 with the season-three finale, “Best of Both Worlds.”

That episode featured the first cliffhanger in Star Trek history and saw Picard abducted and assimilated by an alien race known as The Borg. It was a genuinely shocking moment pulled off decades before such twists became common on the small screen.

Stewart also was at the center of several episodes considered among history’s finest hours of sci-fi television, including the alternate timeline-focused “Yesterday’s Enterprise” in 1990 and 1992’s “The Inner Light,” which had Picard live an entire lifetime, all in the blink of an eye.

Stewart and his cast of Americans became known as one of the closest in television, but in the early years, the theater veteran had trouble accepting the jokes that accompanied a typical 14-hour day on the set.

“Those guys taught me that you can do good work and have a good time at the same time,” he said in 2013. “Before that, I had always thought the two were unconnected completely.”

Next Generation ended in 1994 after seven seasons, going out with an Emmy nomination for outstanding drama series and spawning four films: Star Trek: Generations (1994), co-starring Shatner; Star Trek: First Contact (1996); Star Trek: Insurrection (1998); and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), which saw Stewart face off against a then-unknown Tom Hardy as a younger clone of Picard.