Ian McKellen has shared a moving tribute to his late friend, Patrick Stewart.
The Star Trek icon died Wednesday "following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia," according to a post on his official X account. And McKellen, who shared a long friendship as well as several stage and screen productions with Stewart, including the X-Men franchise, posted a statement honoring his roots and their relationship.
"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," McKellen wrote on Instagram. "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. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love."
The two initially met as young stage actors in England's famed Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellen shared how, a few years after meeting, he discouraged Stewart from taking the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard because he feared for his acting career. “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 told him at the time, in his recollection.
Looking back, McKellen reflected how it was good fortune that his friend turned down his advice about Star Trek, which would make Stewart internationally famous. "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," McKellen said.
The Englishman went on to state that while "America was his adopted home" — the country where Stewart met his "adored" wife, the Los Angeles-based singer Sunny Ozell — "he never forsook his origins." Stewart's "proudest achievement," McKellen revealed, was becoming chancellor of the University of Huddersfield, a research university in the late actor's native Yorkshire, England. Stewart held this leadership position (and taught drama classes there) from 2004 to 2015, after which time the school named a building after him.
McKellen and Stewart were close friends; the former officiated the latter's marriage to Ozell in 2013. “My friendship with Ian is as important as anything that I have in my life, and my wife also is in love with him, which makes it quite an easy relationship," Stewart said. Together, they were also a prominent example of a friendship between a straight man and a gay man, who in addition to working together also advocated for LGBTQ+ causes.
The pair famously played hero and villain opposite one another in the X-Men franchise, with Stewart as Professor X and McKellen as Magneto. In his tribute, McKellen acknowledged the upcoming production where these characters will reunite on the big screen. "His farewell performance in 'Avengers: Doomsday' is yet to be seen," McKellen teased. That film comes out in theaters December 18.
