Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen, from Star Trek to X-Men

From Jean-Luc Picard to Charles Xavier, the actor’s Shakespearean training – and that sonorous voice – made him a unique charismatic force in Hollywood Patrick Stewart dies age 86 His life in pictures O Captain, our Captain: on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart could make anyone feel hopeful for humanity ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute No actor showed the commercial potential of blue-chip British classical training like Patrick Stewart.

With style, technique and the most minutely self-aware, almost vaudevillian sense of mimicry, Shakespearean thesps can turn their hand to American movies and high-end American television and show the American method actors how it’s done – sometimes, even, at the beginning of their screen careers, at a competitively low wage. Stewart was one of the thoroughbreds of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1970s stage generation who had also had classy small screen roles, such as his…