Much of Stewart’s radical political perspective emerged at an early age. Born in 1940, he grew up poor in Yorkshire, England, the youngest of three brothers. Stewart’s mother worked in a textile factory, while his father worked several working-class jobs, including as a day laborer and postman, never coming to terms with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) he suffered from after his experiences during World War II.

Stewart’s father would often subject his wife to domestic violence. Witnessing his mother’s exploitation at work and abuse at home profoundly shaped Stewart’s politics. Rather than accepting these injustices as inevitable, he committed himself to fighting them. Stewart said he became a socialist at the age of five. Later in life, he became an outspoken campaigner against domestic violence, drawing on the experiences that had so blighted his childhood:

I’ve been a witness to unfairness in society all my life. To the conditions under which my mother worked all her life, working in an industrial weaving shed in the north of England. And it has been this feature of unfairness that has motivated me in all of my political thinking.

Stewart also discovered from a young age, with the encouragement of his grammar school English teacher, that he had a wonderful talent for acting. Indeed, at the age of ten, that very teacher gave the young Patrick a copy of Macbeth and told him to get up on stage and perform. Stewart was a natural. He continued to act throughout his school career, often working alongside friend Brian Blessed, who would also go on to an impressive dramatic career of his own. Stewart and Blessed later received grants to attend the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Stewart was reportedly the first person who was neither a graduate of Oxford nor Cambridge to receive a grant from West Riding Council.

Stewart began his professional career in 1959 with a production of Cyrano de Bergerac in Bristol. In 1966, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he worked alongside actors such as Ben Kingsley. In 1967, he also made his on-screen debut, landing a one-off bit part in the long-running UK soap opera Coronation Street.

He subsequently appeared in Shakespearean plays and BBC dramas, including turns playing Vladimir Lenin in Fall of Eagles (1974) and the KGB mastermind Karla in the critically acclaimed adaptations of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982). It also paved the way for a number of bit parts in films. These included John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and David Lynch’s Dune (1984), where his character Gurney Halleck memorably charges into battle cradling a pug.

Even as his screen career developed, Stewart maintained a deep commitment to the theater, encouraged by his lifelong friend and fellow Shakespearean powerhouse actor, Ian McKellen. Indeed, Stewart’s longtime connection to the theater and to Shakespeare proved to be key in his landing the role that would propel him to global fame.

When Stewart was cast as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), he drew on his years of Shakespearean training to develop the starship captain. As he put it, “There is a formality to the way they speak and comport themselves that reminds me of numerous Shakespearean situations I’d been in onstage. I should play Jean-Luc, I realized, as if he were a character in Henry IV, which is about brave men.”

This proved to be a stroke of genius, with Picard immediately becoming a fan favorite. Picard’s assured and wise but commanding demeanor alongside his philosophical bent proved to be the very ideal representation of who one would want to have exploring the cosmos on behalf of humanity. The show is considered by many to be the greatest iteration of Star Trek, and it is likely the version that hewed most firmly to series creator Gene Roddenberry’s famously left-wing politics, politics shared by Stewart. His singular performance helped make the show a success, and it made Stewart a household name and transformed him into an international star.

To viewers like me, who grew up watching The Next Generation, Picard represented the ideal father figure, something he himself never had. Yes, Picard had a quiet authority — Stewart said his own father could command any room he walked into — but Picard was also a man of deep kindness, intelligence, and compassion with a strong aversion to violence. His mission was one of peace, and though the USS Enterprise often found itself in peril, Picard was almost always able to negotiate a nonviolent way out. Picard embodied a vision of authority based not on domination but on cooperation, reason, and mutual respect. It was a vision compatible with Stewart’s socialism — a commitment to humanity over the barbarism of domination and violence.

Perhaps Stewart’s most powerful exploration of these themes came in the two-part Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds.” Over the course of the two episodes, the Enterprise encounters the Borg, a monstrous cybernetic collective that absorbs other civilizations into a single hive mind — an unsettling vision of the individual entirely subordinated to a larger power. Captured and assimilated by the Borg, Picard is eventually rescued by his crew. But the experience leaves him profoundly traumatized, forcing him to struggle with the lasting consequences of having his humanity stripped away.

Throughout the rest of the series, whenever Picard has further encounters with the Borg, he must struggle with his own belief in the sanctity of all life in the universe, versus resentment and the desire for revenge. Stewart’s portrayal of Picard’s anguish may have drawn on his own experience of childhood trauma growing up in a violent household — he had certainly spoken about the lasting psychological damage caused by his father’s abuse.

Picard’s subsequent encounters with the Borg repeatedly tested his commitment to compassion over revenge. His struggle to resist violence, even against those who had harmed him, remains one of the series’ most affecting expressions of its humanistic ideals.

Stewart also became a fierce defender of science fiction as a genre, recognizing its ability to explore complex moral, ethical, and philosophical questions. He once reportedly walked off a Good Morning America promotional appearance after learning that producers intended to ridicule the show and science fiction as a whole. The series of course was wildly successful, not only reviving the Star Trek franchise but spawning four feature films, each time with Stewart reprising his starring role.

This respect for science fiction and genre entertainment was also probably what helped guide Stewart to his other most iconic role: Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film franchise. Beginning with the Bryan Singer adaptation X-Men (2000), Stewart played the psychically powered founder of, and mentor to, the X-Men across several films. Working alongside old friend Ian McKellen (in the roll of the antagonist of the series, Magneto), the films, much like the comics they were based on, explored the conflicting philosophies of the two men in a wider metaphor for the civil rights movement. Stewart’s Xavier sought equality and coexistence between humans and superpowered mutants, while McKellen’s Magneto favored a more militant response to persecution, a conflict often interpreted as an allegory of the contrasting political approaches associated with Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X.

Despite some unwieldy scripts, Stewart and McKellen brought Shakespearean gravitas to their roles, making the ideological conflict between Xavier and Magneto genuinely compelling. The two would also reunite onstage in 2009 for a celebrated performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a lifelong ambition for the pair.

Off-screen, Stewart used his newfound fame to champion causes that mattered to him. He campaigned against domestic violence and championed women’s rights, trade unions, animal welfare, and greater recognition of PTSD among veterans. He also opposed Brexit and spoke out against right-wing demagogues, including Donald Trump. A resounding belief in fairness, ingrained in him from an early age, remained his guiding light.

Stewart also revealed a gift for comedy, gleefully parodying his own dignified persona in appearances on Extras and the animated program Family Guy as well as a legendary turn hosting Saturday Night Live in 1994. Stewart continued to work right up until his death: his final film arriving in theaters this winter will see him reprise the part of Charles Xavier one last time.

He will be remembered not just as one of the finest actors of his generation but also as a committed socialist who believed that compassion, equality, and solidarity were principles worth fighting for.

For those of us who grew up watching Jean-Luc Picard, he offered something equally valuable: an example of leadership rooted not in intimidation or force but in intelligence, cooperation, and respect for others. It was a vision of humanity worth aspiring to, both on earth and among the stars.