Patrick Hewes Stewart was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart, a regimental sergeant major in the British ArmyParachute Regiment during the Second World War who later worked as a general labourer and postman. He had two older brothers, Geoffrey and Trevor. Stewart spent much of his childhood in a poor household in Mirfield, where he experienced domestic violence at the hands of his father. As a result of his wartime service during the Dunkirk evacuation, his father suffered from combat fatigue, later known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Stewart said in 2008, "My father was a very potent individual, a very powerful man, who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode onto the parade ground, birds stopped singing. It was many, many years before I realised how my father inserted himself into my work. I've grown a moustache for Macbeth. My father didn't have one, but when I looked in the mirror just before I went on stage I saw my father's face staring straight back at me."
Stewart attended Crowlees Junior and Infants School, a Church of England–affiliated school in Mirfield. He later attributed his acting career to his English teacher there, Cecil Dormand, who "put a copy of Shakespeare in [Stewart's] hand" and told him to get up and perform. He entered Mirfield Secondary Modern School in 1951, aged 11, and continued to study drama there. Around the same time, he met and befriended fellow actor Brian Blessed during a drama course in Mytholmroyd. At the age of 15, he left school and increased his participation in local theatre. He supported himself by working as a newspaper reporter and obituary writer for a local newspaper, but left after one year when his boss gave him an ultimatum to choose acting or journalism. According to one of his brothers, Stewart would attend theatre rehearsals when he was supposed to be at work and then invent the stories he was reporting or persuade other reporters to cover for him. Stewart gained employment in a furniture store, which allowed him to attend rehearsals with few scheduling conflicts. He found that his thespian talent was applicable to the job, resulting in him becoming a productive salesman while practising his acting technique by tailoring his pitch for each customer. He also trained in boxing. He said that acting served as a means of self-expression in his youth. Stewart and Blessed later received grants to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Stewart was the first person who was neither a graduate of Oxford nor Cambridge to receive a grant from West Riding Council.
Career
1959–1986: Early acting roles and the National Theater
Stewart's first professional stage appearance was on 19 May 1959 at the Theatre Royal, Bristol (for the Bristol Old Vic Company), playing Cutpurse (a thief among the audience for the play-within-a-play) in Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by John Hale. Following a period with Manchester's Library Theatre, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, remaining with them until 1982. He became an associate artist of the company in 1967. He appeared with actors such as Ben Kingsley and Ian Richardson. In January 1967, he made his debut TV appearance on Coronation Street as a fire officer. In 1969, he had a brief TV cameo role as Horatio, opposite Ian Richardson's Hamlet, in a performance of the gravedigger scene as part of episode six of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation television series. During the early 1970s, UCSB professor Homer Swander recruited him to help teach U.S. university students about Shakespeare, which led to his breakthrough into Hollywood. He made his Broadway debut as Snout in Peter Brook's 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, then moved to the Royal National Theatre in the early 1980s. Stewart was a prolific actor in performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in more than 60 productions. His first appearance was in 1966 in The Investigation, and in the years that followed he became a core member of the company, taking on three or four major roles each season. On 18 November 2012, Stewart appeared on stage at St Martin's Theatre in the West End for a 60th anniversary performance of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running play.
Stewart preferred classical theatre to other genres, asking Doctor Who actress Lalla Ward why she would work in science fiction or on television. In 1987, he nonetheless agreed to work in Hollywood on a revival of Star Trek, after Robert H. Justman saw him while attending a literary reading at UCLA. Stewart knew nothing about the cultural influence of Star Trek or its iconic status in American culture. He was reluctant to sign the standard contract of six years, but did so as he, his agent, and others with whom Stewart consulted all believed the new show would quickly fail, allowing him to return to his London stage career after making some money. Regardless, Stewart's trusted colleague, Ian McKellen, was particularly vocal in advising Stewart not to throw away his theatrical career for this foray into television, which Stewart had to disregard considering the opportunity. While in Hollywood, he spent 18 months using the professional name "Patrick Hewes Stewart" while negotiating the rights to his original name from an American actor who had already registered it with the Screen Actors Guild.
When Stewart was picked for the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), the Los Angeles Times called him an "unknown British Shakespearean actor". Still living out of his suitcase because of his scepticism that the show would succeed, he was unprepared for the long schedule of television production that began at 4:45 am each day. He initially experienced difficulty fitting in with his less-disciplined castmates. In interviews, he recalled with embarrassment a time when he scolded the main cast for being unprofessional in his opinion, by saying, "We're not here... to have fun!" Furthermore, Stewart stated that his "spirits used to sink" whenever he was required to memorise and recite technobabble. He eventually came to better understand the cultural differences between the stage and television and relaxed to a degree at work, and his favourite technical phrase became "spacetime continuum". His respect for the genre and work grew to the point that he walked off the set when he discovered that Good Morning America was to film a promotional segment that he saw as belittling the series. He would later write that the role of Picard reminded him of his Shakespearean roles, stating, "I should play Jean-Luc, I realised, as if he were a character in Henry IV, which is about brave men".
Stewart remained close friends with his fellow Star Trek actors and became their advocate with the producers when necessary. Marina Sirtis credited Stewart with "at least 50%, if not more" of the show's success because others imitated his professionalism and dedication to acting. Jonathan Frakes said that, with some shows he had been on, there were actors who showed up without having read the script, but Stewart had "set such a high bar for preparation. We all came to work in the morning completely prepared. We knew our lines and had broken down the script".
It really wasn't until the first season ended [when] I went to my first Star Trek convention ... [I] had expected that I would be standing in front of a few hundred people and found that there were two and a half thousand people and that they already knew more about me than I could ever possibly have believed.
—Stewart, on when he realised he had become famous
After The Next Generation began, Stewart soon found that he missed acting on the stage. Although he remained associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the lengthy filming for the series had prevented him from participating in most other works, leaving a "gaping hole" of many years in his CV as a Shakespearean actor, causing him to miss opportunities to play such notable roles as Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard III. Instead, Stewart began writing one-man shows that he performed in California universities and acting schools. One of these—a version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol in which he portrayed all 40-plus characters—became ideal for him as an actor as well, because of its limited performing schedule. In 1991, Stewart performed it on Broadway, receiving a nomination for that year's Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show. He staged encore Broadway performances in 1992 and 1994, with the 1993 run held in London and the 1996 production in Los Angeles. Stewart brought the show back to Broadway in 2001, with all proceeds going to charity; the revenue from the 28 December performance specifically went to the 11 September campaign of the Actors Fund of America. A 23-day run re-opened in London's West End in December 2005. For his performances in this play, Stewart received the Drama Desk Award for Best Solo Performance in 1992 and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment for Solo Performance in 1994. He was also the co-producer of the show, through the company he set up for the purpose: Camm Lane Productions, a reference to his birthplace in Camm Lane, Mirfield.
Stewart's other film and television roles included the flamboyantly gay Sterling in the 1995 film Jeffrey and King Henry II in The Lion in Winter, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his performance and an Emmy Award nomination for executive-producing the film. He portrayed Captain Ahab in the 1998 made-for-television film version of Moby Dick, receiving an Emmy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award nomination for his performance. He also starred as Scrooge in a 1999 television film version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, receiving a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his performance.
When asked in 2011 for the highlight of his career, he chose Star Trek: The Next Generation, because "it changed everything [for me]." He also said he was very proud of his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation for its social messages and educational impact on young viewers. When questioned about his role's significance compared to his distinguished Shakespearean career, he said, "The fact is all of those years in Royal Shakespeare Company—playing all those kings, emperors, princes and tragic heroes—were nothing but preparation for sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise." The accolades he received include the readers of TV Guide in 1992 choosing him with Cindy Crawford, of whom he had never heard, as television's "most bodacious" man and woman. In an interview with Michael Parkinson, he expressed gratitude for Gene Roddenberry's response to a reporter who said, "Surely they would have cured baldness by the 24th century", to which Roddenberry replied, "In the 24th century, they wouldn't care."
"It came to a point where I had no idea where Picard began and I ended. We completely overlapped. His voice became my voice, and there were other elements of him that became me" ... No director in Hollywood wanted to cast this grand, deep-voiced, bald English guy because everybody knew he was Picard and couldn't possibly be anybody else. In the event, he effectively reprised the part as Professor Charles Xavier – a grand, deep-voiced, bald English guy – in the X-Men films.
The success of the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV and film franchises typecast Stewart as Picard, and obtaining other roles became difficult. He also found returning to the stage difficult because of his long absence. He commented that he would never have joined The Next Generation had he known that it would air for seven years: "No, no. NO. And looking back now it still frightens me a little bit to think that so much of my life was totally devoted to Star Trek and almost nothing else."
2000–2010: X-Men film series and Macbeth on Broadway
Stewart with co-star Hugh Jackman at the 2017 world premiere of Logan
However, in the late 1990s, he accepted a key role in the big-budget X-Men film series as Professor Charles Xavier, founder and mentor of the superhero team—a role similar in many ways to Picard. He was initially reluctant to sign on to another movie franchise, but his interest in working with director Bryan Singer persuaded him. In addition, Stewart was joined by Ian McKellen, who had by then conceded that his friend had made a prudent choice performing in popular screen science fiction; McKellen played Xavier's friend and ideological nemesis, the supervillainMagneto. Stewart played the role in seven feature films (X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Logan) and voiced the role in several video games (X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends II, and X-Men: Next Dimension). Stewart announced that he would be leaving the X-Men film franchise after Logan.
In late 2003, during the 11th and final season of NBC's Frasier, Stewart appeared on the show as a gay Seattle socialite and opera director, who mistakes Frasier for a potential lover. In July 2003, he appeared in Series 2 (Episode 09) of Top Gear in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car segment, achieving a time of 1:50 in the Liana. In 2005, he was cast as Professor Ian Hood in an ITV thriller 4-episode series Eleventh Hour, created by Stephen Gallagher. The first episode was broadcast on 19 January 2006. In 2005, he also played Captain Nemo in a two-part adaptation of The Mysterious Island. Stewart also appeared as a nudity-obsessed caricature of himself in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's television series Extras. He played John Bosley in the 2019 action comedy film Charlie's Angels, released on 15 November.
Stewart signing autographs following a production of Hamlet at the RSC in July 2008
He played Antony again opposite Harriet Walter's Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the Novello Theatre in London in 2007 to excellent reviews. During this period, Stewart also addressed the Durham Union Society on his life in film and theatre. When Stewart began playing Macbeth in the West End in 2007, some said that he (aged 67 at the time) was too old for the role for a character; nevertheless, he and the show again received excellent reviews, with one critic calling Stewart "one of our finest Shakespearean actors". He was named as the next Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre based at St Catherine's College, Oxford, in January 2007. In 2008, Stewart played King Claudius in Hamlet alongside David Tennant. He won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor for the part. When collecting his award, he dedicated the award "in part" to Tennant and Tennant's understudy Edward Bennett, after Tennant's back injury and subsequent absence from four weeks of Hamlet disqualified him from an Olivier nomination.
In 2009, Stewart appeared alongside Ian McKellen as the lead duo of Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), in Waiting for Godot. Stewart had previously appeared only once alongside McKellen on stage, but the pair had developed a close friendship while waiting around on set filming the X-Men films. Stewart stated that performing in this play was the fulfilment of a 50-year ambition, having seen Peter O'Toole appear in it at the Bristol Old Vic when Stewart was just 17. Reviewers stated that his interpretation captured well the balance between humour and despair that characterises the work.
2010–2019: Return to Broadway, voice roles, and Logan
In 2011, Stewart appeared in the feature-length documentary The Captains alongside William Shatner, who played Star Trek Captain James Kirk, and who also wrote and directed the film. In the film, Shatner interviews actors who have portrayed captains within the Star Trek franchise. The film pays a great deal of attention to Shatner's interviews with Stewart at his home in Oxfordshire, as well as at a Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada; Stewart reveals the fear and personal failings that came along with his tenure as a Starfleet captain, and also the great triumphs he believes accompanied his role as Picard. In 2016, he narrated Connected Universe, a crowdfunded documentary film directed by Malcolm Carter on the ideas of self-styled physicist Nassim Haramein.
[London theatre] critics ... have showered him with perhaps the highest compliment they can conjure. He has, they say, overcome the technique-destroying indignity of being a major American television star.
In 2014, Stewart and McKellen appeared on Broadway with two alternating productions, Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land. To promote the plays, Stewart and McKellen acted on Stewart's wife's suggestion to tour New York City in a Twitter campaign in which the actors would take playful photographs of themselves visiting various tourist locations on their days off while wearing their Godot characters' bowler hats. Although the plays' marketing department disapproved of the idea, the actors proceeded with the inexpensive publicity campaign, which proved a major success. Furthermore, this campaign changed Stewart's image as a serious actor by emphasising his sense of humour, which led to frequent guest appearances on various comedy programs. He also hosted a gala at the 2015 Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, where he famously delivered a self-deprecating mock eulogy for himself.
He returned to the role of Professor X in the James Mangold directed Logan (2017). The film premiered at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim with especially positive notices for Stewart's performance. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Stewart, using a rasp that suggests decay is working its way out from the inside, does some beautiful work, especially with Mr. Jackman" comparing his performance to that of King Lear. Sheri Linden of The Hollywood Reporter described him as "superb" adding, "Stewart is effortlessly compelling as a man whose attentiveness to the world around him runs deep, even as his own tethers to it are fraying." He was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actor.
2020–present: Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Trek: Picard
Stewart in 2023
On 4 August 2018, CBS and Stewart jointly announced that he would reprise his role as Jean-Luc Picard in a new Star Trek series. In a prepared statement, Stewart said he and the new show's producers would "endeavour to bring a fresh, unexpected and pertinent story to life once more." Star Trek: Picard aired three seasons from 2020 to 2023.
Stewart, who was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 to 1982, was an Honorary Associate Artist of the company, a designation typically awarded after an actor's principal period with the RSC.
In 2004, Stewart was appointed chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, and in July 2008 he became a professor of performing arts. During this period, he regularly attended graduation ceremonies in the UK and Hong Kong and taught master classes for drama students. He stepped down from the chancellorship in July 2015 and was named chancellor emeritus at the installation ceremony for his successor, Prince Andrew, Duke of York. A year later, in August 2016, a university building was renamed the "Sir Patrick Stewart Building".
In 2006, Stewart made a short video against domestic violence for Amnesty International, in which he recollected his father's physical attacks on his mother and the effect it had on him as a child. He said, "The physical harm ... [was] a shocking pain. But there are other aspects of violence which have more lasting impact psychologically on family members. It is destructive and tainting. As a child witnessing these events, one cannot simply help somehow feeling responsible for them; for the pain, and the screaming, and the misery." In the same year, he gave his name to a scholarship at the University of Huddersfield, where he was Chancellor (2004–2015), to fund post-graduate study into domestic violence. Stewart's childhood experience also led him to become a patron of Refuge, a UK charity for abused women, founded by Erin Pizzey.
In 2009, Stewart gave a speech at the launch of Created Equal, a book about women's rights, talking again about his personal experiences with domestic violence and the impacts they had on him. He said, "Violence is a choice, and it's a choice a man makes ... the lasting impact on my mother ... and indeed on myself ... was extreme. Overcoming the lessons of that male stereotype that I was being shown was a struggle." He expressed his hope to set an example of "what it has been like to be in an environment of such violence and that it can pass and that one can survive it and even though sometimes still a struggle." Additionally, in October 2011, he presented a BBC Lifeline Appeal on behalf of Refuge, discussing his own experience of domestic violence and interviewing a woman whose daughter was murdered by her ex-husband.
Stewart supported the armed forces charity Combat Stress after learning about his father's post-traumatic stress disorder when researching his family genealogy for the documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? He was a patron of the United Nations Association – UK, and delivered a speech at UNA-UK's UN Forum 2012 on Saturday 14 July 2012, speaking of his father's experiences in the Second World War, and how he believed the UN was the best legacy of that period.
On 15 April 2018, Stewart attended the launch event of the People's Vote, a campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.
Stewart was an avid advocate for pit bulls. He fostered several dogs through Wags and Walks, a dog rescue in Los Angeles, and was honoured at the rescue's annual gala in 2018. He partnered with the ASPCA in 2017 for their National Dog Fighting Awareness Day Campaign. He would frequently tweet pictures of himself with his foster dogs. In 2021, the ASPCA gave him their Pit Bull Advocate & Protector Award.
Stewart married his first wife, Sheila Falconer, in 1966; they divorced in 1990. They had a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Sophia. Daniel is also an actor and appeared alongside his father in the film Death Train, the sitcom Blunt Talk, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light", playing his son in the latter. In his autobiography, Stewart said that he and American actress Jennifer Hetrick had an affair during Stewart's marriage to Falconer, causing a breakdown in their marriage. He said that he and Hetrick dated during parts of the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation and were engaged during the filming of "Qpid", although they never married.
In 1997, Stewart became engaged to American producer Wendy Neuss, one of the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They married on 25 August 2000 and divorced three years later. Four months before his divorce from Neuss, Stewart co-starred with English actress Lisa Dillon in a production of The Master Builder, and the two were romantically involved until 2007.
In 2008, Stewart began dating American singer and songwriter Sunny Ozell, 39 years his junior, whom he met while performing in Macbeth at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He purchased a home in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighbourhood in August 2012, and subsequently began living there with Ozell. In March 2013, it was reported that they were engaged, and they married in September 2013 with Ian McKellen officiating. In 2020, Stewart revealed that his marriage to Ozell in Nevada had not been legally binding; the couple learned that McKellen's ministry credentials were not valid in Nevada, so they held a secret official ceremony with McKellen at a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles a couple of weeks prior to the Nevada ceremony.
Beliefs, causes, and interests
Stewart stated that his politics were rooted in a belief in "fairness" and "equality". He considered himself a socialist and was a member of the Labour Party. He stated, "My father was a very strong trade unionist and those fundamental issues of Labour were ingrained into me." He was critical of the Iraq War and UK government legislation in the area of civil liberties, in particular its plans to extend detention without charge to 42 days for terrorist suspects. He signed an open letter of objection to this proposal in March 2008. In August 2018, he was widely misquoted by The Daily Telegraph and others, who announced that he had left Labour owing to concerns over the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. He posted on Twitter to confirm that he had been misquoted and clarified that he had not left the party.
Stewart was an atheist and a patron of Humanists UK. He also identified as a feminist. He publicly advocated for the right to assisted suicide. In January 2011, he became a patron of Dignity in Dying and campaigned for an assisted dying law in the UK.
In August 2014, Stewart was one of 200 public figures who signed a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue. In 2016, Stewart was among more than 280 figures from the arts world who backed a vote to remain in the EU in the referendum on that issue.
Stewart was a lifelong supporter of his local football club, Huddersfield Town. He was at Wembley Stadium in 2017 when the club won promotion to the top division for the first time since 1972. From 2010, he was president of Huddersfield Town Academy, the club's project for identifying and developing young talent.
In an interview with American Theatre, he said: "From time to time, I have fantasies of becoming a concert pianist. I've been lucky enough through the years to work very closely with the great Emanuel Ax. I've said to him that if I could switch places with anyone it would be with him."
In 2015, Stewart defended the Belfast-based Christian bakers who were penalised for discrimination after refusing to bake a cake with words reading, "Support Gay Marriage". Stewart, on his Facebook profile, said that while he was still opposed to organised religion, "It was not because it was a gay couple that they objected, it was not because they were celebrating some sort of marriage or an agreement between them. It was the actual words on the cake they objected to. Because they found the words offensive. I would support their rights to say 'No, this is personally offensive to my beliefs, I will not do it.'" The Christian bakers ultimately won in a landmark Supreme Court decision for the United Kingdom, almost simultaneously with a similar case in the United States.
Stewart was an avid car enthusiast and was regularly seen at Silverstone during British Grand Prix weekends. He served as the grand marshal of the 2015 Grand Prix of Long Beach and conducted the podium interview with the top three finishers in the 2017 Canadian Grand Prix. On a 2003 appearance on Top Gear, he set a lap time of 1 minute and 50 seconds on the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" feature. He held a Motorsport UK competition licence and competed in the 2012 Silverstone Classic Celebrity Challenge race, finishing ninth, 3 m 02.808 s behind winner Kelvin Fletcher. In 2012, Stewart met his racing hero Stirling Moss for the BBC Two documentary Racing Legends.
2026: Patrick Stewart Performs the Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare
Explanatory notes
↑In the episode "The Inner Light", Daniel Stewart played Batai, son of Kamin, an alternate persona which Picard had unknowingly taken on for the purposes of that single episode's plot.
↑In William Shatner's 2011 film The Captains, Stewart stated: "I have two major regrets, and they're both to do with the failure of – my failure in – my marriages."
References
↑Named after his father's army sobriquet. Stewart, Patrick (2023). Making It So: A Memoir. London: Gallery Books. p.4.
↑Trowbridge, Simon (2008). Stratfordians: a Biographical Dictionary of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Oxford, England: Editions Albert Creed. pp.471–473. ISBN978-0-9559830-1-6.
123Nemecek, Larry (1992). "Rebirth". In Stern, Dave (ed.). The Star Trek The Next Generation Companion. New York: Pocket Books. p.18. ISBN978-0-671-79460-6.
↑Ward, Lalla. "Lalla Ward". K9 & Co. (Interview). Interviewed by McGann, Paul. BBC. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 1 April 2016.
↑Wolf, Matt (7 May 2009). "McKellen and Stewart Deliver a 'Godot' With a Difference". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 July 2009. ...the two tramps suspended in the limbo that, broadly speaking, is life. But in my extensive experience of this play, I've never seen a staging as attuned to the presence of mortality that underpins even Beckett's jauntiest repartee.
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