Inside Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's Half-Century Friendship

Ian McKellen has said goodbye to his closest friend in the business.

Patrick Stewart, the Star Trek and X-Men star, died on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. A day later, McKellen paid tribute to the man he had known for half a century.

"He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love," McKellen, 87, wrote.

Ian McKellen's tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart on his official Instagram account, October 29, 2026.

He called Stewart "the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic."

Here's how two young stage actors became one of Hollywood's most beloved friendships.

It started at the Royal Shakespeare Company

"We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago," McKellen wrote.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart on its official Instagram account.

In its own tribute, the Royal Shakespeare Company called Stewart "a colossus of both stage and screen." It said he first joined the company in 1966 and went on to appear in more than 40 of its productions.

McKellen followed in 1974. Both were in the cast of the company's 1977 staging of Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour in London.

The Star Trek advice McKellen got wrong

One of McKellen's first strong memories of Stewart is a piece of advice that turned out to be wrong.

McKellen wrote that he ran into Stewart on a street in central London, where Stewart told him about an offer for a leading part in Star Trek. McKellen told him not to take it. "But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK," he recalled saying. He asked whether Stewart really wanted to risk "getting lost in Hollywood for years and years."

Stewart said yes anyway, and played Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994.

"Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did," McKellen wrote this week.

Stewart brought it up more than once. In his 2023 memoir, Making It So, he wrote that "Ian has acknowledged that he was wrong and I was right."

X-Men turned colleagues into best friends

The real bond formed in 2000, on the set of X-Men. Stewart played Professor Charles Xavier, McKellen played his rival Magneto, and their trailers sat right next to each other.

Stewart has said that is where the friendship started, since actors spend more time sitting in their trailers than in front of the camera.

In 2006, they were side by side again at Cannes to promote X-Men: The Last Stand.

Two knights on stage together

Once the friendship took hold, they kept finding ways to work together.

In 2009, they starred in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in London's West End, with Stewart as Vladimir and McKellen as Estragon. In 2013, they took on Harold Pinter's No Man's Land, first at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and then on Broadway, where it ran in repertory with Godot. They brought No Man's Land to the West End in 2016.

McKellen married Stewart and his wife

In September 2013, McKellen officiated Stewart's wedding to singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell at Lake Tahoe. Stewart has said McKellen's credentials were not accepted in Nevada, so the couple also held a separate legal ceremony in Los Angeles.

Stewart talked about it years later. "And by the way, he married us, my wife and me. He performed the ceremony," he told Wired in 2020.

McKellen's tribute also spoke of Ozell. He wrote that in America Stewart met "his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin."

One last film together

There is still one more chapter to come. Stewart returns as Professor Xavier in Avengers: Doomsday, which opens in theaters on Friday, Dec. 18. McKellen, who plays Magneto, is in the film too.

McKellen ended his tribute on exactly that note. "His farewell performance in 'Avengers: Doomsday' is yet to be seen," he wrote.

For the friend who once warned him against Hollywood, it is a fitting last word.