Ian McKellen Tribute Calls Patrick Stewart “a Man to Rely On” After His Death at 86

The Ian McKellen tribute to Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at 86, is short, plainspoken and affectionate, much like the friendship it describes. Posted to Instagram, it casts the late actor first and foremost as a Yorkshireman, and only after that as a Hollywood figure.

Stewart’s longtime spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, said he died at his Los Angeles home with his wife, singer Sunny Ozell, by his side. She described “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.” Bush Novak wrote that he had been surrounded by family and friends, live music, prayer, tears and laughter.

A Yorkshireman First

McKellen opened by describing Stewart as “defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire,” a county he “loved to the end.” The accent, McKellen suggested, was only part of it. The rest was a “stern honesty” in saying what he thought and felt. “Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues,” McKellen wrote. “He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”

That sense of origin carried through the rest of the message. Although “America was his adopted home,” McKellen said, Stewart “never forsook his origins.” He named the actor’s proudest achievement as his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire. That is a striking choice for a man with an OBE (2001), a knighthood (2010) and a career that stretched from Stratford-upon-Avon to Broadway.

The Star Trek Gamble

The most revealing passage in the Ian McKellen tribute is a street-corner memory. The two had met as ambitious young actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company roughly half a century ago, though they weren’t in the same productions. A few years later, McKellen ran into Stewart in central London, where he learned of an offer to take over a leading part in Star Trek.

McKellen admitted he voiced doubts, asking whether Stewart really wanted to risk getting “lost in Hollywood for years and years” at the expense of his stage career. “Well, he took the risk,” McKellen wrote, “and thank goodness for us all that he did.” He credited that choice with giving audiences both devoted Trekkies and a run of film successes, X-Men among them. It also let Stewart use his fame to return to Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett.

Professor X, Magneto and a Famously Open Affection

Variety notes that the two men had crossed paths before but became close on the 2000 film X-Men, where they played Professor X and Magneto, allies and rivals. Stewart recalled in a 2020 Wired interview that they had adjoining trailers and passed the downtime over tea, and perhaps “something a little stronger” in the afternoon. “We found we had so much in common,” he said.

The bond lasted. McKellen officiated at Stewart’s 2013 wedding to Ozell, and the pair often showed their affection publicly, including kisses at red-carpet events. They also shared stages, notably in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land. In 2023, McKellen said that going around with Stewart was “like going around with the pope,” adding: “Not that people genuflect, but he’s touched so many lives.”

One Last Appearance

McKellen ended his message with a forward-looking line: “His farewell performance in Avengers: Doomsday is yet to be seen.” Both actors are set to reprise their X-Men roles in the Marvel film, due in theaters on December 18. That leaves the Ian McKellen tribute with an unusual final note, since one more Stewart performance is still waiting for audiences.

Other tributes have followed from figures including Kevin Feige, William Shatner, Hugh Jackman, Seth MacFarlane, Rebecca Romijn and Famke Janssen. McKellen’s stands out for its tone. It is less a list of credits than a portrait of a friend who spoke bluntly, took a career gamble and never lost sight of home.

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File photo: Patrick Stewart 1999.jpg by Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.