Ian McKellen has broken his silence on the death of Patrick Stewart, calling the fellow actor a man he came to love across a friendship that spanned half a century.
McKellen, 85, posted a lengthy tribute to Instagram on Wednesday, the day Stewart died at age 86 at his Los Angeles home after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia. The post opened with Stewart’s Yorkshire roots, which McKellen said defined everything about his friend. “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,” he wrote.
“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.”
The two men first crossed paths as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, though they were not cast in the same productions. McKellen’s first vivid memory came a few years later, during a chance encounter on a central London street. “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’,” McKellen continued.
“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 marvelled 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 singled out Stewart’s marriage to singer Sunny Ozell, whom the actor met in his adopted America. “America was his adopted home, where he met his adored [wife] Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin,” McKellen stressed. “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.”
The friendship deepened dramatically when the two British actors were cast as mutant adversaries in 2000’s “X-Men,” with Stewart playing Professor Charles Xavier and McKellen taking the role of Magneto. They reunited for “X2: X-Men United” in 2003, “X-Men: The Last Stand” in 2006, “The Wolverine” in 2013, and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014. Their final on-screen appearance together will come in “Avengers: Doomsday,” scheduled for release this December.
Stewart himself traced the origin of their bond to those early days on the “X-Men” set. In a 2020 “Wired” interview, he explained how adjoining trailers led to daily rituals that cemented their connection. “We had adjoining trailers,” he said. “On those kind of movies, you spend more time sitting in your trailer than you do in front of the camera.”
“So, Ian and I hung out together, drinking tea — and maybe in the afternoon, something a little stronger — and we got to know one another.”
Stewart said “the charm” of their friendship was discovering how much they shared as British stage actors who had built careers on classical work. “And by the way, he married us, my wife and me,” Stewart added, referring to McKellen officiating his 2013 wedding to Ozell. “He performed the ceremony.”
By 2016, Stewart was describing their connection in unguarded terms, calling it simply a “love affair.” That same year, McKellen offered his own assessment during a joint Interview magazine feature tied to their Broadway run in “Waiting for Godot” and “No Man’s Land.” “What I love about Patrick is that he’s so predictably myself,” McKellen said. “I think we are the same person. If Patrick comes into a rehearsal room and says, ‘Look, look…’ I know what it’s going to be about.”
Their friendship was not without its disagreements. In his 2023 memoir “Making It So,” Stewart revealed that McKellen had nearly physically blocked him from signing his “Star Trek: The Next Generation” contract. “When I told him I was going to sign the contract, he almost bodily prevented me from doing so,” Stewart wrote. “‘No! No, you must not do that. You must not. You have too much important theater work to do. You can’t throw that away to do TV. You can’t. No!'”
Stewart noted that he trusted few people’s counsel on acting matters more than McKellen’s, though he ultimately chose the path that made him a household name as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Tributes poured in from across the entertainment industry as news of Stewart’s death spread. Marvel Studios highlighted his quarter-century association with the role of Professor X. “For more than 25 years, he brought a gravitas and profundity to the role, earning fans across the globe and helping to transform Super Hero storytelling forever,” the studio said in its statement.
Hugh Jackman, who played Wolverine across multiple films opposite Stewart, called him “one of the greats of stage and screen today.” “I learned so much from him,” Jackman added. “I will miss you, Patrick Stewart, all of my days.”
In his final interview, conducted just three months before his passing, Stewart had acknowledged the shrinking opportunities for older performers while insisting he would never step away from his craft. “I still continue to receive interesting offers and I love being challenged by new work,” he said. “I can’t imagine ever officially ‘retiring.’ I’ll always and forever be an actor.”
Stewart was in the “loving care” of his wife Sunny at the time of his passing, according to a statement from his family.
“Avengers: Doomsday” is scheduled for theatrical release in December.