Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart in Waiting For Godot
Sir Ian McKellen has described the late Sir Patrick Stewart as a man to “rely on”, “admire” and “love”.
The veteran actor died at his home in Los Angeles on Wednesday following a short battle with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia.
McKellen and Stewart were close friends for decades, performing together in multiple productions, including the X-Men movies on the big screen and Waiting For Godot on the stage.
In a letter posted to Instagram, McKellen wrote: “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. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
“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?”.
“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.
“His farewell performance in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ is yet to be seen.”
McKellen and Stewart will appear together for the final time when Avengers: Doomsday is released on December 18.
