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SIR PATRICK STEWART (1940-2026)
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.
Ian McKellen 29 October 2026
Photo: University of Huddersfield
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Here is some footage from this morning. Thank you for reading. Hope everyone is having a good day
It is 18:54, I am hiding in the middle of an electrical closet on an abandoned floor while what I presume to be a maintenance worker is having a smoke nearby. I am once again wondering why I do this. In twelve hours, if winds of good fortune blow my way, I will be leaving the building after sunrise to the bizarre look from whoever is behind the front desk. I will be dressed in a black T-shirt and pants stained from the raw concrete I slept on and climbed up hours before. I really want to quit this work, and I feel no shame in the announcement of that feeling. I am here because I still feel the demand I’ve always felt, perhaps greater than ever.
I have learned these buildings by their sounds—keys jangling, different machines turning on and off, walkie talkies and elevators running up and down. Patterns mean you’re safe, an interruption in the spaces in between means beware. I have learned to be quieter than quiet, to sink until I become part of the bones of the building itself. I watch schedules, study shift changes and see who is diligent and who isn’t. My leg is falling asleep as I write these words.
If I share these photos, it means I made it overnight, climbed the pyramid in the midst of Wall Street, took what I hope to be some halfway decent photos and made it back safe. It means I continued down a long stretch that feels like the end of this work as I know it. It means I felt the sadness of that and kept on anyways, because that’s all life is—a game of going on. I don’t know where I’m going, now more than ever it’s just all one strange unfolding mystery.
For now, I am here in the electrical closet on the abandoned floor of the pyramid on Wall Street. The maintenance worker has finished their cigarette just across the floor and we are both waiting for something, I’m not sure what.
14 Wall Street, 2026, New York City
