RIP Old Friend: Ian McKellen Pens Heartbreaking Eulogy for Patrick Stewart
For more than 50 years, they were rivals on screen and inseparable off it. Now Sir Ian McKellen has said goodbye to his closest friend in the business.
Sir Patrick Stewart died on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. His spokesperson said he died in the care of his wife, Sunny Ozell, after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia, diagnoses that had not been made public.
Within hours, McKellen, 87, shared a long and deeply personal tribute on Instagram. It is the kind of farewell only someone who had known Stewart for half a century could write.
“A Man to Rely On, to Admire and in My Case, Love”
McKellen addressed his tribute to “Sir Patrick Stewart” and began, fittingly, with Yorkshire.
Before anything else, McKellen wrote, Stewart was defined by having been born and raised in the proud northern English county, a place he loved until the end. McKellen said you could hear Yorkshire in Stewart’s accent and in the blunt honesty with which he always told you exactly what he thought and felt.
That honesty, McKellen suggested, was the key to who his friend was. Stewart “wore his heart on his sleeve,” McKellen wrote, which made him “a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”
McKellen called Stewart the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic. He recalled meeting him “half a century ago,” when both were young actors finding their way in British theater.
America Was Home, but Yorkshire Was Never Forgotten
McKellen noted that although America became Stewart’s adopted home, and the place where he met Sunny, he never turned his back on where he came from.
According to McKellen, Stewart considered his greatest achievement to be not Picard or Professor X, but his appointment as Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, just a few miles from the town of Mirfield where he grew up. McKellen illustrated his tribute with a photograph of Stewart taken by the university.
McKellen also thanked Ozell for her devotion during Stewart’s illness, and closed by remembering the last time the two friends appeared together.
Rivals on Screen, Brothers Off It
To moviegoers, McKellen and Stewart will always be Magneto and Charles Xavier, the old friends turned bitter enemies at the heart of the X-Men films. Beginning with Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000, the two men turned what could have been a cartoonish superhero rivalry into something closer to Shakespeare: two brilliant, aging men who loved each other but could not agree on how to save their people.
That chemistry was not acting. Their friendship off-screen was one of the most famous in show business.
McKellen even played a small part in launching Stewart’s most famous role. In his tribute, he recalled that he once urged Stewart to think twice before accepting the part of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Stewart took it anyway, and it made him one of the most recognizable actors in the world.
Their real partnership, however, was on stage. In 2009, they starred together in a celebrated London revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In 2013, they took it to Broadway, performing it in repertory with Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land. Audiences adored watching “the two Sirs” bicker and clown their way through Beckett’s tragicomedy, and photos of the pair sightseeing around New York in bowler hats became an internet sensation.
That same year, McKellen officiated Stewart’s wedding to Sunny Ozell.
Stewart once admitted that when he was a young actor, he had worshipped McKellen and found him intimidating. McKellen, for his part, often joked that their careers had followed remarkably similar paths. The two even laughed about the old rivalry between their home counties: Stewart was from Yorkshire and McKellen from Lancashire, the two sides of the 15th-century Wars of the Roses.
In 2023, McKellen captured what it was like to be in public with his friend. “Going around with Patrick is like going around with the pope,” he said. People didn’t kneel, he explained, but Stewart had touched so many lives.
Hollywood Mourns
McKellen’s tribute was one of many as news of Stewart’s death spread.
Hugh Jackman, who starred alongside both men as Wolverine, called Stewart one of the greats of stage and screen and said he would miss him all his days. Star Trek icon William Shatner also paid tribute. Marvel Studios, which had brought Stewart back as Professor X for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, said it was deeply saddened by his passing.
The U.K.’s Alzheimer’s Society also expressed its sadness, noting the illness Stewart had faced privately in his final months.
The loss hit the Star Trek family especially hard. Stewart died just days after Walter Koenig, who played Ensign Pavel Chekov on the original series.
A Friendship Facing Mortality
McKellen’s eulogy carries extra weight because of what he has said recently about growing older. In an interview with The Sunday Times this year, the actor, who suffered a frightening fall on stage in 2024, spoke openly about accepting that he is not immortal. He said that one of the hardest parts of aging is that your friends die all the time, and death becomes ever-present.
Yet McKellen also said he still had more to do, and that he admired friends who lived as though they didn’t want to miss anything. It is hard not to think of Stewart, who told TV Insider just this July that he could never imagine officially retiring because he would always be an actor.
One Final Reunion on Screen
Fans will have one more chance to see Stewart’s Professor X when Avengers: Doomsday opens in theaters on December 18, 2026. For many, it will be impossible to watch without thinking of the friendship between the two men who brought Xavier and Magneto to life.
In the X-Men films, the two characters spent decades arguing over the future of the world, yet never stopped caring for each other. In real life, McKellen and Stewart skipped the arguing and kept the caring.
