Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: First Contact. Stewart, known for his roles in Star Trek and X-Men, died Wednesday at the age of 86.PARAMOUNT PICTURES/The Associated Press
For many, the image that immediately comes to mind when thinking of Sir Patrick Stewart is one of gentle, profound dignity.
As Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier – two of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most stalwart pop-culture heroes – Stewart was able to harness his peerless Royal Shakespeare Company training to deliver singularly warm, almost totemic performances that allowed audiences to believe that, as dark as the world could sometimes get, there was still a bright, guiding light out there. The actor was, at large, nobility personified.
Stewart touches his newly unveiled star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December, 1996.Fred Prouser/Reuters
But for me, my first thought when it comes to Stewart – who died Wednesday at the age of 86, after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia – was his delight in playing a lip-smacking villain of the highest order, a real antagonist who could crush his enemies with one misplaced stare.
Patrick Stewart on acting heroes and his rocky relationship with Star Trek’s salty creator
In the 2015 thriller Green Room, Stewart deliberately set out to subvert the gentle image that he had cultivated over decades of hard, committed craftsmanship through the twinned franchises of Star Trek and X-Men. Playing a neo-Nazi murderer who presided over a group of dim-witted thugs in the backwoods of Oregon, Stewart delivered a master class in the theatrical art of shedding one skin to adopt another – of truly becoming someone else, no matter the consequences that such an act might deliver to a well-honed image.
Stewart’s work in director Jeremy Saulnier’s intentionally nasty and unbelievably taut Green Room is not only magnificently entertaining, but also wild in the most unhinged sense. But in his eagerness to rebuke the legacy that he built via two of the most fervent, sometimes stubborn fan bases going, the role was definitive. It spoke to Stewart’s true spirit and ambition: to become a master storyteller, no matter the costs.
Of course, even though Green Room has since gained stature as a cult classic, many will come to mourn Stewart solely through the lens of his work in Star Trek and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And there’s no problem in that, given that those two mega-franchises likely wouldn’t exist, or certainly wouldn’t be taken with nearly as much respect as they are now, were it not for Stewart’s participation.
Cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation (clockwise from top left): Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Stewart, Levar Burton and Marina Sirtis.The Canadian Press
When Stewart first boarded the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, Gene Roddenberry’s brand had endured a few sizable dents and knocks, thanks to some ill-advised feature films and a general sense in the zeitgeist that the franchise’s idealized brand of space opera was at odds with the more adrenalin-pumping fare then being pumped out in the genre’s landscape.
Yet the immediate onscreen presence that Stewart brought to the role of Captain Picard, a man of deep emotional weight but also battle-hardened resolve, not only thrilled audiences and gave new life to an entire enterprise of a different sort, but helped push the limits of what small-screen storytelling could do on a weekly basis. If you are of a certain age, you might begin to tear up just remembering the final episode of TNG, when Picard was pushed through decades and lifetimes to reckon with his purpose in the cosmos – a tale that was entirely dependent on the million little things that Stewart brought to the character over the course of nearly a decade.
Patrick Stewart during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2023.Willy Sanjuan/The Associated Press
That same sense of gravitas is what made the big-screen X-Men franchise seem like a genuinely cinematic endeavour, and not a B-movie writ large. We can spend many thousands of words talking about everything else that director Bryan Singer wrought upon the world. But the filmmaker’s decision to cast Stewart as the benevolent mutant mentor Charles Xavier and Stewart’s long-time friend and London stage compatriot Ian McKellen as Xavier’s ideological foe, Erik (Magneto) Lehnsherr – the two characters positioned as essentially the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X of Marvel’s superhero universe – was a stroke of genius. By installing such widely respected, tremendously talented actors into such an ostensibly absurd world, that first X-Men movie kick-started a cinematic empire that is still going strong today.
Stewart poses for photos with a gift of a painting of his character in X-Men in February, 2017.SAM YEH/AFP/Getty Images
Indeed, we all now have an added incentive to see where that business has gone with the forthcoming release of Avengers: Doomsday this December, which seems designed to both close off the comic-book movie era that Stewart was instrumental in forming and start a new one. (This despite the fact that, in true comic-book fashion, the actor’s version of Professor X has been killed onscreen no fewer than three previous times.)
Will the next inevitable generation, so to speak, of blockbusters ever be able to muster up as supreme and poised a talent as Stewart? Doubtful. But we can thank the actor for a career that still lives long and prospers.