Patrick Stewart: Before accepting Star Trek fame, his first love was Shakespeare

Sir Patrick Stewart’s first love was the stage and the plays of William Shakespeare but it was to be a science fiction series and a series of superhero films that brought him worldwide fame.

Through his more than 60-year career in movies, TV and the theatre including 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), he was never shy of speaking his mind, often giving his backing to political campaigns and providing talk shows with an amusing anecdote.

Aside from having the reported admiration of the late Queen, Sir Patrick also earned a Grammy for best spoken word album for children for Prokofiev: Peter And The Wolf in 1996.

He also earned four Emmy nominations for various work and two supporting actor Olivier Awards for Shakespeare plays, the first for Antony And Cleopatra in 1979 and the second for Hamlet in 2009.

His death at his Los Angeles home aged 86 was announced on his Instagram, in a post that said it followed a “brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy Body Dementia”.

Born in Mirfield, Yorkshire in 1940, Sir Patrick was the son of an army sergeant major, who he later revealed subjected his mother to repeated bouts of violence.

At the age of 12, he enrolled in an eight-day drama course and got the acting bug.

He quit school at 15 to work as a cub reporter on a local paper but left the day the editor gave him an ultimatum, to choose either acting or journalism.

Sir Patrick worked as a furniture salesman before winning a scholarship for the Bristol Old Vic theatre school at the age of 17.

The famously bald star wore a toupee for auditions and promised “two actors for the price of one”.

In his mid-20s, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing alongside the likes of House Of Cards actor Ian Richardson and Gandhi star Sir Ben Kingsley.

Sir Patrick also landed roles in TV dramas such as I, Claudius, Smiley’s People, and Fall of Eagles in which he played the Russian revolutionary Lenin and briefly appeared in Coronation Street in the 1960s.

The Shakespearean actor shot to fame when he originated the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.

The sci-fi TV series ran for seven years, with films Star Trek Generations in 1994 and Star Trek: First Contact in 1996. Sir Patrick later said the success of the show handicapped him because directors did not want to cast the captain of the Starship Enterprise in their films.

Sir Patrick also later admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry took a dislike to him almost immediately, saying he did not “want a bald, middle-aged Englishman” to play the role.

He said: “Somewhere in the cellar of Paramount Pictures, there’s a Post-it note which says, ‘I do not want to hear Patrick Stewart’s name mentioned again ever,’ signed Gene Roddenberry.”

However, Sir Patrick’s career still excelled in Hollywood and he appeared in the 1990s films, the musical Let It Be Me, romantic comedy Jeffrey, Julia Roberts-starring thriller Conspiracy Theory and animated film The Prince Of Egypt.

For a new generation, his Star Trek past was soon forgot as he took on his biggest role on the big screen as the Marvel superhero Professor Charles Xavier in all the first three blockbusters, which began life in 2000.

He would come back to the series in 2014’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past, 2017’s Logan, 2022’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine.

After James McAvoy took on a younger role as Professor X, the Scottish actor revealed that Sir Patrick was sent cuttings of his hair when he shaved his head for the part, claiming the late actor keeps it in his safe.

Sir Patrick became an officer of the OBE in 2001.

He appeared opposite Doctor Who actor David Tennant in the televised and play version of Hamlet, taking dual roles as Claudius and the ghost, for which he would be given an Emmy nod.

Sir Patrick would dedicate his Olivier in 2009 for the role to Tennant following the actor most of the London run of the RSC production by a back injury.

That same year, Sir Patrick finished a 22-week run of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot alongside Sir Ian McKellen, who had played his friend turned nemesis Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto in the X-Men film series.

The two actors have had a long friendship and Sir Ian previously counselled him not to do science fiction.

Sir Patrick received his knighthood for services to drama in 2009, and was knighted by the late Queen in 2010.

At the time, he said: “It was an unlooked-for honour but as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness.

“The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held.

“And now to find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”

Sir Patrick had a very public row at the 2010 Glamour Awards with comedian and actor James Corden, which resulted in the two exchanging verbal jabs on stage.

The veteran actor criticised Corden’s hosting abilities, suggesting he should not look like “you wish you were anywhere but here”, and made several jokes about his weight.

Corden responded with his own advice, that Sir Patrick should “get on with it”, and later asked for a taxi to be ordered to take “the old man home”.

The pair have reportedly made up since the incident, and starred in a humorous skit together for the Channel 4 Comedy Gala in which they appeared in a bed together.

A year later, Sir Patrick pledged his support for a campaign calling for a change in the law on assisted dying in the UK through Dignity in Dying, which aims to legalise the choice of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults.

He said: “We have no control over how we arrive in the world but at the end of a life we should have control over how we leave it.”

Sir Patrick echoed his thoughts in 2022, telling MSPs to back new legislation in Scotland, saying: “Dying people should not be forced to take drastic measures travelling to another country to take their own life.

“They should have the choice to die at home on their own terms.”

In 2012, he returned to the stage to celebrate the 60th anniversary of record-breaking stage show The Mousetrap alongside other actors including Julie Walters, and Tamsin Greig, and a year later married his wife Sunny Ozell, 38 years his junior.

Known for his outspoken views, he signed an open letter ahead of the vote on Scottish independence urging the Britain to “stay together” and later during the Brexit vote also tried to dissuade voters against leaving the European Union.

In 2015, he returned to his journalism roots by being in US sitcom Blunt Talk as a cable news reporter.

He reunited with Sir Ian again in 2016 on stage for a revival of Harold Pinter’s 1975 play No Man’s Land, and that same year could be seen as white-supremacist Darcy Banker in the horror film Green Room.

Asked whether he had any reservations about playing a villainous role, Sir Patrick told PA: “On the contrary. I embraced the contrast as fully as possible.”

A year later during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, he revealed that in an intimate moment with his wife led to him getting checked out by a medical professional for clarification on whether he was circumcised.

He said: “I happened to be seeing my doctor the next day for a check-up so while he was down there I said, ‘By the way, my wife and I have had a little disagreement, I am circumcised, aren’t I?’

“He took a closer look and said: ‘Not! I am Jewish, and definitely know the difference!'”

Regretting his candid admission while on the BBC TV chat show’s couch, Sir Patrick said: “Oh no, my grandchildren will be watching this!”

In 2018, he called for medicinal cannabis to be legalised as he gave his support to a young boy hoping to receive the treatment for epilepsy.

Sir Patrick, who says he uses medicinal cannabis to treat his arthritis, joined Alfie Dingley and his family and gave his support to their campaign, which they delivered to the then then Prime Minister Theresa May.

He said: “I have been registered for medical marijuana in California for over three years and have found it immensely beneficial for my arthritis.

“I had to have eight steroid injections in my fingers and knuckles, which was about as painful as anything one could imagine, because medicinal cannabis is not available here.”

That same year, he opened the London launch of the People’s Vote – a movement that campaigned for a referendum on the final EU deal.

He told the crowd: “It is not Charles Xavier standing here in front of you – although I can assure you that if he was, he would have voted Remain. And why? Because unity, common cause, wellbeing of society and debate were paramount to belief of this fictional character.”

In 2019, he was in The Kid Who Would Be King, an Arthurian tale of teenagers learning the qualities of leadership.

The next year, he was allowed to put his handprints outside the TCL Chinese Theatre and made a come back to his best known science fiction role with the release of Star Trek: Picard.

“I’m still not really believing any of it,” Sir Patrick said at the ceremony.

“Any moment now somebody will say, ‘Patrick, Patrick, get up, you’re dreaming again.’”

Following Brexit, he scrapped the idea of planning to apply for US citizenship so he could vote against Donald Trump.

While referring to then prime minister Boris Johnson in 2020, he told the Press Association: “I think we have our own Trump in our country here today, so I am going to be using my vote to try and get rid of him.”

Sir Patrick, who has been married three times, has a son and a daughter.