Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor whose career on stage and screen has lasted more than six decades. His honours include two Olivier Awards and a Grammy Award, and he has been nominated for a Tony Award, three Golden Globes, four Emmys, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2010, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his contributions to drama.

Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966. He made his Broadway debut in 1971 in *A Midsummer Night's Dream*. In 1979, he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his West End performance in *Antony and Cleopatra*. His first television role came in 1967 on *Coronation Street*, and his early major screen roles included *Fall of Eagles* (1974), *I, Claudius* (1976), and *Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy* (1979). In 2008, he returned to the role of King Claudius in *Hamlet*, earning a second Olivier Award and his first Tony Award nomination for the West End and Broadway productions, respectively.

Stewart became an international star for his leading role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on *Star Trek: The Next Generation* (1987–1994), a part he later reprised in several films and the series *Star Trek: Picard* (2020–2023). He also starred as Captain Ahab in the miniseries *Moby Dick* (1998), Ebenezer Scrooge in the television film *A Christmas Carol* (1999), and King Henry II in *The Lion in Winter* (2003). He received Primetime Emmy nominations for comedic guest roles on the sitcoms *Frasier* (2003) and *Extras* (2005), and he led the Starz comedy series *Blunt Talk* (2015–2016). Since 2005, he has voiced CIA executive Avery Bullock on *American Dad!*.

In film, Stewart gained fame as Professor Charles Xavier in the *X-Men* series from 2000 to 2017, later reprising the role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His other film credits include *Hedda* (1975), *Excalibur* (1981), *Dune* (1984), *L.A. Story* (1991), *Robin Hood: Men in Tights* (1993), *Jeffrey* (1995), and *The Kid Who Would Be King* (2019). He has also voiced characters in *The Plague Dogs* (1982), *The Prince of Egypt* (1998), *Bambi II* (2006), *TMNT* (2007), *The Emoji Movie* (2017), and *The Sheep Detectives* (2026).

Stewart was born on 13 July 1940 in Mirfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart (1905–1980), a regimental sergeant major in the British Army Parachute Regiment during the Second World War who later worked as a general labourer and postman. He has two older brothers, Geoffrey (born 1925) and Trevor (born 1935). His childhood was spent in poverty in Mirfield, where he experienced domestic violence from his father, who suffered from combat fatigue (now known as PTSD) after the Dunkirk evacuation. Stewart recalled in 2008, "My father was a very potent individual, a very powerful man, who got what he wanted. It was said that when he strode onto the parade ground, birds stopped singing. It was many, many years before I realised how my father inserted himself into my work. I've grown a moustache for Macbeth. My father didn't have one, but when I looked in the mirror just before I went on stage I saw my father's face staring straight back at me."

He attended Crowlees Junior and Infant School, a Church of England school in Mirfield. He credited his English teacher, Cecil Dormand, with launching his acting career by handing him a copy of Shakespeare and telling him to perform. At age 11 in 1951, he entered Mirfield Secondary Modern School and continued studying drama there. Around that time, he met and befriended fellow actor Brian Blessed on a drama course in Mytholmroyd. Stewart left school at 15 and increased his local theatre work, supporting himself as a newspaper reporter and obituary writer. He left after a year when his boss told him to choose between acting and journalism. According to one of his brothers, Stewart would attend rehearsals during work hours and either invent stories or have colleagues cover for him. He then took a job at a furniture store, which allowed him to rehearse with few scheduling conflicts; he found his acting skills helped him tailor sales pitches to customers, making him productive. He also trained in boxing. Stewart has said acting gave him a way to express himself as a youth. He and Blessed later received grants to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Stewart was the first person from neither Oxford nor Cambridge to receive a grant from West Riding Council.

His first professional stage appearance was on 19 May 1959 at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, playing Cutpurse in *Cyrano de Bergerac* for the Bristol Old Vic Company. After a period with Manchester's Library Theatre, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and stayed until 1982, becoming an associate artist in 1967. He performed alongside actors such as Ben Kingsley and Ian Richardson. In January 1967, he made his TV debut on *Coronation Street* as a fire officer. In 1969, he had a brief cameo as Horatio opposite Ian Richardson's Hamlet in a gravedigger scene for episode six of Sir Kenneth Clark's *Civilisation* series. In the early 1970s, UCSB professor Homer Swander recruited him to teach American university students about Shakespeare, which led to his breakthrough.