Ian McKellen Shares "Love" of Patrick Stewart in Moving Tribute

This story originally appeared on Out.Ian McKellen has shared a moving tribute to his late friend, Patrick Stewart.The Star Trek icon died Wednesday "following a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia," according to a post on his official X account. And McKellen, who shared a long friendship as well as several stage and screen productions with Stewart, including the X-Men franchise, posted a statement honoring his roots and their relationship. "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," McKellen wrote on Instagram. "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. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love."The two initially met as young stage actors in England's famed Royal Shakespeare Company. McKellen shared how, a few years after meeting, he discouraged Stewart from taking the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard because he feared for his acting career. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk — getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?" McKellen told him at the time, in his recollection.Looking back, McKellen reflected how it was good fortune that his friend turned down his advice about Star Trek, which would make Stewart internationally famous. "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. See on Instagram The Englishman