Patrick Stewart has spent almost 40 years playing two of science fiction’s most recognizable characters, Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies. They both made good use of the British actor’s authoritative voice and Shakespearean training, but they barely scratched the surface of what he was capable of. Stewart passed away October 28th at the age of 86. Across his nearly 70-year career, he was just as comfortable playing a king as he was a killer. Though he came to it later, he also mastered comedy and could land a perfect self-effacing joke.
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Stewart spent 14 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, sharing the stage with some of Britain’s most renowned actors, before he became well-known in Star Trek. Even after becoming famous throughout the world thanks to Captain Picard, he regularly went back to the stage to perform Dickens and Shakespeare in addition to his film and television projects. He developed a reputation for being witty and eventually joined forces with Seth MacFarlane on a regular basis. Stewart frequently seemed unfazed by the idea of protecting his reputation, whether he was playing a news anchor whose personal life was a series of self-inflicted disasters or terrorizing kids in a lost action movie from the 1990s. These five performances are worth watching again to truly understand the range of the actor we’ve lost.
5. Masterminds – Bentley (1997)
Apparently, in the 1990s, playing a Starfleet captain entailed playing the villain in a teen film. William Shatner played the scheming uncle in 1996’s The Prisoner of Zenda, Inc., and Patrick Stewart followed up a year later with Masterminds, a film that can best be described as Die Hard meets Home Alone, with a dash of Hackers thrown in for good measure. No wonder Avery Brooks screens his calls.
Vincent Kartheiser, who would go on to fame as Mad Men’s Pete Campbell, plays Ozzie, a rebellious teenage hacker who finds himself trapped at his younger stepsister’s private school when a group of armed criminals takes the students hostage. Stewart plays Bentley, a security expert who has masterminded the whole operation behind the scenes. Unfortunately for Bentley, Ozzie is pretty skilled with the school’s computer systems and begins to turn the complex security measures against the kidnappers. Masterminds might not be a hidden gem, but Stewart does give a delightfully over-the-top performance as the villain. He gets to scare the kids, bark orders at useless henchmen, and channel a little bit of Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber. He is also doing something he rarely does outside of the holodeck during a Robin Hood simulation. He’s playing arch.
4. Dune – Gurney Halleck (1984)
Before Patrick Stewart ever set foot on the bridge of the Enterprise, he was already voyaging to strange new worlds in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Stewart played Gurney Halleck, the weapons master of the House Atreides and one of the men who helped train young Paul Atreides, played by Kyle MacLachlan. Gurney is a battle-hardened warrior, but surprisingly artistic, too; he’s as comfortable with a sword as making music to amuse his companions.
Lynch’s Dune was a famously troubled production, attempting to pack Herbert’s massive novel into just over two hours. The results are often puzzling, but the cast is remarkable. Stewart is joined by Max von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, José Ferrer, and Sting, who, as Feyd-Rautha, is literally on another planet. More recently, Josh Brolin played Gurney in Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation, so modern moviegoers have a chance to compare two very different takes on the character. Stewart’s performance has a theatrical quality that suits Lynch’s bizarre vision of the distant future perfectly. The movie may not have conquered the box office, but Stewart would get another chance at sci-fi immortality just three years later.
3. A Christmas Carol – Ebenezer Scrooge (1999)
Patrick Stewart didn’t just turn up to play Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1999 television adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. He had already spent over a decade developing the character in his acclaimed one-man stage production, in which he performed the entire story himself. Stewart played every character from Scrooge to Tiny Tim, with little more than his voice and physical performance to bring Dickens’ world to life. He won a Drama Desk Award for the production. The TV adaptation came because of Stewart’s involvement in another literary classic. While he was playing Captain Ahab in the 1998 miniseries Moby Dick, producer Robert Halmi Sr. asked him to do a Christmas Carol for television. Stewart, who was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Ahab, also became an executive producer of the Dickens adaptation.
Stewart’s Scrooge is vicious. He portrays him as a bitter, miserable old man to the border of sadism. He takes genuine pleasure in the pain he inflicts. Unlike many of the Scrooges who’ve appeared on screen, Stewart’s Ebenezer seems painfully aware of the suffering he causes. He just doesn’t care. He has no patience for Christmas, charity, or the world around him. Stewart makes him so thoroughly unpleasant that it’s difficult to imagine this man ever finding happiness, much less sharing it with anyone else. That makes his redemption all the more satisfying. When audiences finally see the warmth of Sir Patrick Stewart’s genuine smile, you can’t help but light up yourself. It’s something that Robert Zemeckis’ CG could never capture.
2. Blunt Talk – Walter Blunt (2015-2016)
For an actor who spent so much of his career playing dignified authority figures, Patrick Stewart had a remarkable talent for playing complete lunatics. And nowhere was that more apparent than in Blunt Talk, the short-lived Starz comedy created by Jonathan Ames and executive produced by Seth MacFarlane. Stewart stars as Walter Blunt, a British television journalist hell-bent on taking over American cable news, even with a staggering collection of personal issues. Walter is a dedicated professional who believes journalism can really make a difference in the world. Unfortunately, he is also a train wreck with a penchant for alcohol, drugs, questionable romantic choices, and an apparently endless ability to embarrass himself in public.
The series was born from Stewart’s long-running partnership with MacFarlane on American Dad!, where he voiced CIA Deputy Director Avery Bullock. The animated comedy opened doors Stewart had never considered before, and he accepted MacFarlane’s pitch for a live-action sitcom without even hearing the premise. Stewart also credits his role on Ricky Gervais’ Extras as helping him discover the secret to unlocking his block on comedic performances: treat even the most ridiculous material with utter seriousness. That earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Blunt Talk. For decades, Stewart played men who always seemed to have the answers. It was just as entertaining to see him play a guy who could barely keep his life together.
1. Green Room – Darcy Banker (2015)
The most chilling performance in Patrick Stewart’s filmography is Green Room. The movie follows a punk band as they try to finish their last performance of a tour before heading home. Fellow Star Trek alum Anton Yelchin plays the band’s bassist, alongside Callum Turner and Alia Shawkat as his bandmates. Unfortunately for them, the final stop turns out to be a neo-Nazi compound in remote rural Oregon. After seeing something they shouldn’t, the band barricades themselves in the venue’s green room. The fascist group calls in their leader to fix the situation. Patrick Stewart is unflinching in his performance as the leader of the Nazi group, Darcy Banker.
Stewart never portrays Banker as out of control or out of his depth. He leaves those emotions for Yelchin’s character. He does this by stripping his tone of malice or mania and addressing the band matter-of-factly about what will transpire. His sense of certainty creates a sense of dread in the band that becomes palpable. The character is repugnant in his ideology but shrewd in his methods. He treats murder as a de facto element of his daily routine, and it collides wonderfully with the chaos of Yelchin’s young punk protagonist. In Green Room, Stewart is the anti-Picard, using his reassuring voice to manipulate young men into weapons instead of heroic Starfleet crew members.
Got a favorite Patrick Stewart performance not on this list? Fan of his Shakespearean work? Let us know the role you remember most in the comments below.
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Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures
