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Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's relationship in focus as Magneto actor pays moving tribute after friend's death
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen played sworn nemesis Professor X and Magneto on screen, but the actors shared a close relationship off-screen.
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Ian McKellen, the actor known for roles like Magneto in the X-Men movies, has paid a touching tribute to late star Patrick Stewart, who died on Wednesday at the age of 86. Stewart portrayed Professor Charles Xavier or Professor X on screen, Magneto's sworn nemesis. Despite their on-screen relationship being that of enemies, McKellen and Stewart have long been friends off-screen.
Hours after the news of Stewart's death broke, McKellen put out a lengthy post on Instagram, looking back on their friendship.
What Ian McKellen said about Patrick Stewart
McKellen, 87, 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.” He added, “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.”
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The actor further continued that Stewart “wore his heart on his sleeve.” As per McKellen, this attribute made him “a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”
A look back at Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart's relationship
McKellen recounted meeting with Stewart when they were both “ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago”. However, the two were not in the same productions at the time.
“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’,” McKellen fondly recounted. He noted that he'd reminded Stewart of his ‘stage career’ in the UK and the possibility of “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,” McKellen said, lauding Stewart's impressive body of work.
“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,” McKellen further said of his friend.
Stewart, meanwhile, had earlier revealed that his bond with McKellen was strengthened when they played their roles in the X-Men movies. “On those kind of movies, you spend more time sitting in your trailer than you do in front of the camera. So, Ian and I hung out together, drinking tea — and maybe in the afternoon, something a little stronger — and we got to know one another. And the charm of it was that we found that we had so much in common,” he had told Wired in 2020.
McKellen had also officiated Stewart's wedding to singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell in 2013. The two have also shared kisses in public. Stewart, a longtime LGBTQ ally, had always been supportive of McKellen, who publicly came out as gay in 1988.
Appearing on The Graham Norton Show in 2017 Stewart had recalled McKellen's remark on their relationship. “He said something the other day … one of the nicest things ever. He said, 'Yeah, Patrick Stewart and I — I really feel that [at] last I have a brother,'” Stewart said.
Stewart's last performance will be seen in Avengers: Doomsday, which releases on December 18.
