7 memorable Patrick Stewart performances

While Patrick Stewart, who died on Oct 28 at the age of 86, might have been best known for his role as the noble starship captain on Star Trek: The Next Generation, his long career was filled with memorable roles.

Stewart was a lauded stage performer, star of the small screen, familiar voice-over actor and an understated comedic presence.

Here are seven performances to remember him by.

An established Shakespearean actor

Before he became a television star, Stewart was a celebrated stage actor in his native Britain. He began working with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966.

Among his best known roles were King Claudius in Hamlet and the titular troubled nobleman in Macbeth.

“I acted Macbeth for exactly 365 days,” Stewart told The New York Times in 2023.

“The role got into me so deeply it dominated my life at the time and caused me to drink too much alcohol after the performance was over.”

‘Tea, Earl Grey, hot’

Stewart’s Star Trek captain, Jean-Luc Picard, drank a lot of tea on the deck of the Starship Enterprise.

Though Picard was French, he seemed to like his drinks English: His order from the ship’s food replicator was usually the same: “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.”

“I suggested lapsang souchong (a Chinese black tea), but the producers thought that nobody would know what it was,” Stewart told Neon magazine in 1998.

A ‘sexy’ baker

Stewart, well known for his many Shakespearean roles, was also versed in comedy.

He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1994, and in one sketch played an erotic-cake baker with a fetish even his customers couldn’t deal with.

He also lent his voice, with its regal English diction, to a legion of projects for which he served as narrator, including Ted, Seth MacFarlane’s comedy about a teddy bear with the soul of a frat boy.

Shakespeare on Sesame Street

He also sought to take Shakespeare to a younger audience.

In 1996, he turned perhaps the most famous passage from Hamlet into a rousing performance on Sesame Street called “B or Not a B”.

The Picard face palm

Captain Picard is one of 20th-century television’s most famous characters. It was therefore only a matter of time until he became an internet sensation.

Played by Stewart as stoic and thoughtful, Picard rarely displayed strong emotions but often registered displeasure by putting his palm to his face.

The move became an internet meme, the most famous version of which comes from an episode of the third season of the show.

“I love that photograph,” Stewart told the website Nerdist.

An animated character

He was also not averse to silliness or self-mockery.

He appeared on more than 90 episodes of the animated series American Dad as Avery Bullock, a US Central Intelligence Agency deputy director with too many character flaws to count, often poking fun at himself or at Star Trek.

The Marvel universe

Stewart was Charles Xavier, also known as Professor X, in several X-Men movies, playing a wealthy telepath in a wheelchair who leads other mutants with superpowers.

Most recently, he reprised the role for Avengers: Doomsday, which is scheduled for release in December.

“I still continue to receive interesting offers and I love being challenged by new work,” he told the website TV Insider in July. “I can’t imagine ever officially ‘retiring’. I’ll always and forever be an actor.” NYTIMES