Sir Patrick Stewart shared a hopeful farewell to listeners in a video recorded weeks before his death.
The English actor, 86, posted the clip on May 20 as part of an audio series devoted to Shakespeare’s sonnets, his final creative project. In it, he spoke directly to the audience about what he wished the readings would leave behind.
“I hope it has brought pleasure and curiosity, but more than anything else, I want it to have communicated all the multiple features that love might have,” he said in the video.
Stewart died at his Los Angeles home after battling Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, according to a family statement shared on his Instagram page. The announcement did not specify a date.
The family statement painted a scene of intimate final moments. “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,” the message read. It noted he was “in the loving care of his beloved wife Sunny.”
“We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace,” the tribute concluded.
Born in Yorkshire, England, in 1940, Stewart built a decades-spanning career across stage and screen. He became a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran and earned international fame as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 2010 for his contributions to drama.
That honor carried deep personal weight rooted in childhood admiration. After the knighting ceremony on June 2, 2010, he recalled the theatrical figures who first captured his imagination.
“… As I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theatre and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier [and] Sir John Gielgud,” he said. “The knights of the theatre represented to me not only the pinnacle of the profession but the esteem in which the profession was held. To find myself, to my astonishment, in that company is the grandest thing that has professionally happened to me.”
Stewart traced his path to that company back to a pivotal teacher. Cecil Dormand, his English instructor, was the first to place Shakespeare directly in his hands and demand action.
“He was the one that put a copy of Shakespeare in my hand [and] said, ‘Now get up on your feet and perform,'” Stewart said.
That early command launched a lifetime of performance that would eventually circle back to the sonnets in his final days. The May 20 video served as both artistic statement and quiet goodbye, Stewart’s last recorded words to the public centered on love’s many forms.
The Shakespeare sonnets audio series represented a return to foundational territory for an actor who never shed his theatrical roots despite decades in film and television. His family noted the “profound emotion” he inspired, a legacy built across mediums but grounded always in live performance and classical text.
Stewart’s death closes a career that moved from Yorkshire schoolrooms to Hollywood soundstages to royal recognition, with Shakespeare threading through it all. The sonnets project, completed in his final months, offered one last chance to transmit what he had spent seven decades exploring.