‘Virile star power’: Patrick Stewart’s greatest stage roles, from clowns to kings to wounded lions

With his striking voice, so rich and resonant, the actor blazed through the RSC – and his time in Hollywood only enriched him. Yet he was a great team player, capable of anything, as his double acts with Ian McKellen showed Patrick Stewart, who has died aged 86, was a classic exa

With his striking voice, so rich and resonant, the actor blazed through the RSC – and his time in Hollywood only enriched him. Yet he was a great team player, capable of anything, as his double acts with Ian McKellen showed Patrick Stewart, who has died aged 86, was a classic example of the company actor who becomes a star: a natural Enobarbus who winds up playing Mark Antony. It would be easy to say that he had fame thrust upon him through his roles in Star Trek and X-Men, but I would argue that it was a two-way process.

As Peter Bradshaw points out , Stewart brought his RSC-trained gravitas to the screen, but his roles in popular franchises gave him an extra layer of confidence and authority on stage. He became, in short, an even more powerful actor. I felt a particular fascination with Stewart’s career, since he was in the first play I ever reviewed for a national paper.

He was Warwick in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan at the Bristol Old Vic in May 1965 and I was instantly struck by his rich, resonant voice. Once he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, I followed his progress eagerly. He seemed the perfect team player, capable of anything: Shakespearean clowns such as Touchstone in As You Like It and Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, or more muscular figures such as Cornwall in King Lear and Hector in Troilus and Cressida.

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