Ian McKellen has shared a tribute to his “X-Men” series co-star and longtime friend Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at the age of 86.
McKellen and Stewart’s relationship goes back decades to their time as young theater actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company. They became inseparably tied together for general audiences when they starred opposite one another in Marvel’s “X-Men” film series, playing the frenemies Magneto and Professor X. Over the years, the two have shared a public friendship, often appearing at premieres for each other’s work and serving as two of British theater’s leading global ambassadors. In 2009, they starred in a West End production of “Waiting for Godot.”
“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. 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,” McKellen wrote in a statement posted to social media. “He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”
McKellen went on to recall Stewart’s decision to play Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in the late ’80s — a role that solidified his presence in Hollywood and made him a household name for general audiences.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. 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’. ‘But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?’” McKellen continued. “Well, 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.”
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. 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.”
McKellen and Stewart will appear together onscreen for a final time in Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” releasing to theaters in December. The two reprise their respective roles of Magneto and Professor X.
Leave a Reply