Sir Ian McKellen is paying tribute to his longtime friend and frequent collaborator Sir Patrick Stewart following his death at 86.
McKellen, 87, honored Stewart via a heartfelt post shared on Instagram on Thursday, October 29.
“Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love,” McKellen wrote.
McKellen shared memories of their time together over the years as well as detailing Stewart’s career success.
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“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in Star Trek. ‘But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?’” McKellen continued. “Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marveled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (X-Men of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.”
McKellen added that while Stewart found fame globally, he never forgot where he came from.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire,” McKellen wrote.
McKellen concluded, “His farewell performance in Avengers: Doomsday is yet to be seen.”
McKellen’s heartfelt message came after Stewart’s family confirmed he died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28, following a “brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia,” according to longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak.
“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.”
Stewart was a famed Shakespearean actor in the U.K. for decades before he made a splash in the U.S. for his portrayal of Professor Charles Xavier or Professor X on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in 1987.
Stewart went on to play the iconic character for seven seasons and four film spinoffs through the early 2000s: 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact, 1998’s Star Trek: Insurrection and 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis.
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The actor also reprised his role in 2000’s X-Men, which is when he and McKellen cemented their friendship and inspired a bromance that fans couldn’t get enough of.
McKellen, a famed British stage and film actor himself, met Stewart working on 1977’s Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It wasn’t until they played adversaries in X-Men, however, that they became lifelong friends.
In the action movie, Stewart played Professor X, while McKellen portrayed his rival, Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto. They later reprised their roles in numerous films, including X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past.
The pair’s professional collaborations didn’t end there. In 2013, McKellen and Stewart joined forces to star in Two Plays in Rep, a combination of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Gadot, in New York City.
That same year, McKellen served as the officiant at Stewart’s wedding when he married Sunny Ozell.
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When McKellen celebrated his milestone 80th birthday in 2019, Stewart was one of many who honored him, writing via Instagram, “Sunny and I are grateful for all the love over the years, whether as a dear friend, minister at our wedding, or colleague on screen and stage.”
The following year, the pals reunited at the London premiere for Star Trek: Picard.
McKellan and Stewart’s last photo together shared via Instagram was in December 2022 when they teamed up to cheer on England in the World Cup, wearing NFL football jerseys as a playful nod to the two types of football that exist.
