Patrick Stewart: A Man Who Bridged Our Past with the Future

I only ever saw Sir Patrick Stewart once in person. It was on stage at the Cort Theatre in New York City, where he starred opposite his late-in-life best friend Sir Ian McKellen. Rife with humor, but also the crushing existential misery that makes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot such a challenge, both for performers and often the audience, Stewart’s performance as Vladimir brought a sense of affectionate doddering to a man waiting for everything and nothing—life to have a point, or for death to end it.

Admittedly though, I was in the audience for a matinee particularly to observe Stewart and McKellen at the top of their craft. As has become an increasingly common phenomenon in 21st century theater, theirs was a casting that brought metatextual baggage and delight, with Stewart and McKellen having famously played frenemies for decades in the 20th Century Fox era of X-Men movies. While the characters of Charles Xavier (Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr (McKellen) have existed on the page for 60 years, it was the real undying bromance of Stewart and McKellen, two classically trained stage actors, which gave their superhero material a gravitas still rare in the cape genre, be it comics or on-screen.

I’ve thought a bit about that over the last day while mourning the loss of Sir Patrick, who passed away this week at the age of 86. A thoroughly British performer who grew up in the provisional part of Yorkshire during the rough rebuilding years of the mid-20th century following the Second World War, Stewart discovered acting as an outlet and escape. He used it to quite literally reinvent himself. It’s thus always a marvel to remember so much of his refined diction and presence was a presence he honed over many years, particularly while working for the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1960s and ‘70s.

Yet something I fear many take for granted when they think of Stewart’s most beloved roles—be it Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise or the aforementioned Professor Xavier of the X-Men franchise—is that here was a genuinely classical actor who made us feel better about the future via reminding us of our past.

In some sense, this could be quite literal. Recall that Stewart worked with the Vivien Leigh (if you haven’t, please watch his lovely reverie of Scarlett O’Hara) and Orson Welles. He genuinely was a link to the glories of a different world. But in a grander notion, he is also a product of a theatrical tradition that goes back centuries. That includes Leigh and her tempestuous union with Sir Laurence Olivier, but it also goes back to the literal times of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, dramatists who used the English language to reveal the joys and sorrows, and even the silliness of what it means to be alive.

One of Stewart’s earliest screen roles, and still among his best performances, is as Sejanus, the Roman Praetorian Prefect in I, Caudius, a man who might have begun his slow power grab with the noblest of intentions. Opposite the likes of Derek Jacobi as the titular “dumb” Roman Emperor, John Hurt as the far more sadistic Caligula, and Siân Phillips as a divinely evil empress-in-the-wings, Livia, the series is still a near obscene showcase of British thespians who’d rotate their seasons between the West End and the BBC.

Among this company, Stewart’s gift was always being able to find the pathos and empathy in the material, making hard, even morally dubious men like Sejanus, pitiable. Through the lens of Ancient Rome, it’s the stuff of tragedy, but in his most famous roles, he built a glistening vision of the future.

While Star Trek has always offered a vision of the 24th century that is shimmering in its promise of better days, and a case can easily be made that the original Star Trek series with Kirk, Spock, and Bones, will always reign supreme, it was Stewart’s Picard and the more egalitarian (if faintly patrician) tone he set on the Enterprise bridge that made Gene Roddenberry’s dream of tomorrow seem tangible. Star Trek: The Next Generation asked Stewart to partake in some occasionally ludicrous scenarios—did you see the episode where he went back in time and became Robin Hood?—but he always treated it with the weight and grandeur of Shakespeare or Beckett.

This might be even better crystallized in what he and Ian McKellen achieved in the original 2000 X-Men movie. Now a bit of a relic of its time, caught between the bombastic excesses of ‘90s action movies and the modern reinvention of the superhero subgenre that occurred a few years later, courtesy of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, the original X-Men trilogy is stuck somewhere between those poles, especially in its first installment. The characters wear the black leather of The Matrix and speak of mutation like this is a sci-fi thriller dystopia.

But it is again the performances, including Hugh Jackman but most magnanimously Stewart, that gives that first X-Men a dramatic heft and grounding that escapes many of the far more expensive superhero movies of today. The film’s dated and the special effects are stilted, as is its barebones screenplay, but Stewart makes the dream of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters seem miraculous; a genuine sanctuary for marginalized and ostracized children who sadly remain a timeless staple in any era.

On the comic book page, Xavier is actually quite aloof and a little bit cold, depending on the writer, but Stewart’s unbounded warmth and deep reservoirs of empathy blow past any such characterization. His Xavier is too kind and preternaturally fatherly to ever be a jerk, even when poor screenplay choices in the likes of X-Men 3 attempt to frame him that high-handed way.

It was almost superhuman how Stewart could imbue any material with hope and humanity. It came from deeply knowing our roots, at least in the great English dramaturgical tradition, and infusing it into stories of tomorrow. Whether science fiction television, or a superhero genre at its absolute nadir following the campy histrionics of Batman & Robin, Stewart saw it all with the potential of the Bard and made you believe in something better. He will be missed.