Patrick Stewart, Who Performed In ‘Plague Dogs,’ ‘American Dad!,’ ‘The Prince Of Egypt,’ And Voiced Poop In ‘The Emoji Movie,’ Dies At 86

Patrick Stewart, whose unmistakable voice brought weight to animated kings, sexually charged absurdity to some of television’s most disreputable authority figures, and dignity to a talking poop, died Wednesday, October 28, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86.

His spokesperson said he had been living with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. His death was announced Thursday.

Known best as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films, Stewart built an extensive animation career alongside his world-class performances onstage and in live action. His credits stretched from The Plague Dogs and The Prince of Egypt to The Simpsons, American Dad!, and English-language versions of films by Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo.

Stewart was also an outspoken admirer of the medium. In a 2011 CNN interview, he offered an endorsement that went well beyond his own voice acting work:

I think in film the most exciting work currently is being done in animation.

Animation offered Stewart opportunities to extend the qualities audiences recognized from his famous screen characters, and, by his own account, gleefully dismantle them. He would regularly make audiences, and himself, break out into giggling fits when discussing some of his more absurd animation roles.

One of Stewart’s earliest voice acting feature credits was Major in Martin Rosen’s devastating The Plague Dogs (1982). Adapted from Richard Adams’s novel, the film belonged to a very different tradition from the family entertainment that would account for much of his later feature work.

In 1994, he voiced Adventure, the swaggering, pirate-styled book in the live-action/animated cult favorite fantasy The Pagemaster. Joining a voice cast that included Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Welker, and fellow Star Trek alum Leonard Nimoy, Stewart helped turn literary genres into physical characters.

A more imposing assignment followed when DreamWorks cast him as Pharaoh Seti in The Prince of Egypt (1998). Stewart gave the ruler the conviction of a man who considered his authority and the violence used to preserve it entirely natural. His ability to convey paternal affection alongside moral blindness lent dramatic weight to the fledgling studio’s ambitious first hand-drawn feature.

His feature career also encompassed broad comedy and science-fiction adventure. He voiced the alien King Goobot in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001), teacher Mr. Woolensworth in Disney’s Chicken Little (2005), and Max Winters in the CG feature TMNT (2007).

For English-speaking audiences, Stewart also appeared in two modern classic anime features. He played the swordsman Lord Yupa in the 2005 English-language dub of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and inventor Lloyd Steam in the English version of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy.

His famous Shakespearean stage career took an animated turn in 2011’s Gnomeo & Juliet, where he voiced a statue of The Bard himself.

On TV, one of his defining guest performances arrived in the 1995 Simpsons episode “Homer the Great.” As Number One, leader of the Stonecutters, Stewart presided over a secret society whose elaborate rituals disguised a collection of petty privileges and childish grievances.

Stewart’s longest-running TV animation role came when he was asked to voice CIA Deputy Director Avery Bullock in American Dad! Stewart began voicing Stan Smith’s boss when the series launched in 2005, lending the character his voice and likeness for the next two decades.

Bullock turned Picard and Xavier’s authority inside out. He was reckless, vindictive, sexually uninhibited, and spectacularly unfit to wield the power he possessed. Stewart’s assured delivery made the character’s behavior even more outrageous, as did the absurdity of a senior CIA official sounding unmistakably British. Stewart joked that the writers had promised him a scene in which the other agents would finally notice his accent, a development he suggested would signal the end of the series.

Stewart spoke warmly about the role and the people behind it, describing American Dad! as a source of extraordinary professional pleasure:

It has given me as much pleasure as almost anything in my career, not just because the writing is brilliant and scabrous and offensive and provocative, but because the people themselves are such adorable people.

MacFarlane, a longtime admirer and collaborator of Stewart’s, mourned the loss of his friend on Instagram, writing:

Patrick was one of those icons who we somehow all took for granted would always be with us.

I grew up as a fan, and was later gifted the privilege of becoming a colleague and friend, working with him for many years on “American Dad!”, “Family Guy”, and “Ted”. He was that rare actor who could take any bit of dialogue and elevate it, making a good writer sound great, and a great writer sound masterful. He was also as humble as they come. I remember exchanging emails with him a number of years ago when he was beginning day 1 of a new film. He commented to me that he always walked onto a new set feeling like the biggest novice there. My stunned reaction was the same as anyone’s would be. I said, “Patrick, if you feel that way, the rest of us are screwed.” We have lost a legendary actor today, and for many of us, a good friend. He will be deeply missed by the entire planet.

 

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His most recognizable live-action characters also followed him into other forms of animation. Robot Chicken brought him back as Gurney Halleck, his character from David Lynch’s Dune, while games offered repeated returns to Picard and Professor Xavier. His Xavier performances included X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse; his Picard credits included Star Trek: Armada, Bridge Commander, and Legacy. Beyond those franchises, his game work included Emperor Uriel Septim VII in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Zobek in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

His appetite for incongruity remained intact in The Emoji Movie (2017), where he voiced Poop. Appearing on Conan, Stewart explained that accepting the part reflected his “philosophy of finding diversity in the work that I do.”

“Thirty years ago, I probably wouldn’t have accepted this role. But I am now honored and delighted to be playing the role of the emoji poop.”

The character, he explained, would be “a very upright, very proper, rather cultivated sounding Englishman.” Stewart clearly enjoyed the absurdity of the assignment, recalling his enthusiastic response when his agent revealed the offer: “How diverse could an emoji role get? Poop is it. That’s the one.”

Born July 13, 1940, in Mirfield, Yorkshire, Stewart joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966. Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in 1987, made him an international star; the X-Men films brought another defining role beginning in 2000. Across those decades, animation became a recurring outlet for both his dramatic skill and his increasingly visible comic appetite.

He is survived by his wife, singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell, and his children, Daniel and Sophia.