Sir Patrick Stewart, 86, Has Died

A real shocker. There are some people you think will live forever, and Sir Patrick Stewart was one of them. The legendary actor has passed away at the age of 86. We’ve lost one of the greats.

According to a statement posted to his official X account, Stewart died Wednesday in Los Angeles after a short battle with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia. Nobody saw this coming. Just a few months ago he was being talked about as part of the “Avengers: Doomsday” ensemble, back in the wheelchair as Charles Xavier one more time.

What made Stewart special was that he never condescended to the material. He came out of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a classically trained actor with a distinct voice, and he brought that exact same seriousness to a starship captain and a mutant telepath.

Think about how unlikely that career was. A bald, middle-aged British stage actor gets cast as the lead of a syndicated Star Trek sequel in 1987, and the trades basically laughed. Seven seasons and four feature films later, he was an icon. Then, at 60, he became Professor X in Bryan Singer's “X-Men” and helped launch the modern superhero era. Most actors get one defining role. Stewart got two, both well into his career.

And yet, if you ask me, his finest blockbuster screen work came in Logan. James Mangold's film gave him a chance to play frail, he was filled with confusion, and regret. His Charles Xavier, a once-brilliant mind now dangerous to everyone around him. That performance deserved more cred. In fact, Stewart was never nominated by the Academy. Don't sleep on Green Room either. Jeremy Saulnier cast him against type as a soft-spoken neo-Nazi club owner, and the calm menace he brought to that role was chilling.

Onstage, he was one of the masters of Shakespeare. After joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, he won Oliviers for his Enobarbus in "Antony and Cleopatra" and his Claudius opposite David Tennant's Hamlet. His 2008 "Macbeth," a general curdling into a paranoid tyrant, earned him a Tony nomination. With Ian McKellen, he found as much comedy as bleakness in "Waiting for Godot" and "No Man's Land."

Stewart was also, by all accounts, a genuinely kind man. He used his platform to speak out about domestic violence, having grown up witnessing it in his own home, and he was always generous with fans who had spent their lives looking up to him.

Rest easy, Sir Patrick.