Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ Dies

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Patrick Stewart was Professor X in five “X-Men” movies, Macbeth on Broadway and, recently, the voice of a wise ram in “The Sheep Detectives.”Credit...Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesPatrick Stewart, Master of Shakespeare, ‘Star Trek’ and More, Has DiedThe British actor was 86. He achieved pop-culture stardom as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”Patrick Stewart was Professor X in five “X-Men” movies, Macbeth on Broadway and, recently, the voice of a wise ram in “The Sheep Detectives.”Credit...Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesListen · 15:35 min Oct. 29, 2026Updated 3:57 p.m. ETPatrick Stewart, who overcame a bleak childhood in England’s coal-mining country to find acclaim as a Shakespearean actor before making an unlikely career pivot in middle age that would bring him his greatest fame, playing a noble starship captain on the TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.The death, from Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, was announced on social media.With a commanding baritone voice — he had shed his Yorkshire dialect as an acting student — Mr. Stewart was by his late 40s an eloquent, statesmanlike presence on the British stage. But to many American television viewers, Mr. Stewart was a new face when he made his debut in 1987 as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in “The Next Generation,” the first live-action spinoff of the original “Star Trek” series of the late 1960s.ImagePicard was said to have been born in France, but Mr. Stewart played the part with a British accent.Credit...CBS Photo ArchiveOld and new fans embraced the balding, graying Picard and the members of his 24th-century crew, among them a pale-skinned android with deadpan comic timing; an intense, half-alien mind-reader; a gruff Klingon; and a blind human engineer wearing a vision visor. Over the show’s seven seasons, as it piled up 18 Emmys and a Peabody Award in first-run syndication, Picard became known for his preternatural calm and his trademark directives “Engage!” and “Make it so.” (Mr. Stewart titled a 2023 memoir “Making It So.”)Mr. Stewart went on to star in four feature-film spinoffs — “Star Trek Generations” (1994), “Star Trek: First Contact” (1996), “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998) and “Star Trek: Nemesis” (2002) — before returning to the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in 2020 in a TV sequel that he could call his own, “Star Trek: Picard,” which ran for three seasons.The Enterprise was neither Mr. Stewart’s first science-fiction home nor his last. He appeared in David Lynch’s original film version of “Dune” (1984) as the weapons teacher Gurney Halleck. Years later, he was Charles Xavier, a.k.a. Professor X, in five “X-Men” movies, playing a wealthy telepath in a wheelchair who leads other mutants with superpowers. Those films, some of which also starred Mr. Stewart’s close friend Ian McKellen, included “X-Men” (2000), “X-Men: United” (2003) and “Logan” (2017).Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT