Patrick Stewart Will Look Great Forever

Whether he’s thundering through Shakespeare, leading the X-Men via telepathy, or escorting us on a tour of his favorite Brooklyn haunts, the knighted British thespian radiates the charisma of a much younger man. Wearing the season’s handsomest new coats, he shows all the world that “dressing your age” can be an ageless art.
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Coat, $1,695, by Emporio Armani | Polo shirt, $325, by Massimo Alba | Sweatpants, $149, by Gosha Rubchinskiy | Sneakers, $65, by Converse | Socks by Anonymous Ism | Glasses (in hand) by Persol | Location throughout: Belasco Theatre, N.Y.C.

Getting a tour of Park Slope from Patrick Stewart—not the part of Brooklyn that's cool or cheap or where Biggie grew up, but the part that's re-inventing itself as a suburban paradise in million-dollar .02-acre increments—is a lot like getting a tour of Manhattan from Buddy, the wide-eyed, irrepressibly cheerful Will Ferrell character from Elf. Everything is a sensation. Nothing is not stupendous. The Gowanus Canal is not merely a canal—it is “one of the most severely polluted stretches of water in the United States.” The artwork on the grimy subway walls is “marvelous.” A snake he spots on the ground is “not a real snake, is it?!” (It's a toy.) Crossing the street, any street, is not just a means of moving from Point A to Point B but also, in Patrick Stewart's eyes, a gamble with death. (He has a phobia.) And, like Buddy, who parades through the city in a green adult-size elf's frock, 76-year-old Patrick Stewart—alias: Professor X; alias: Macbeth; alias: Captain Picard, starship Enterprise—is impossible to miss. The tour is Stewart's idea. Yorkshire-born, he's proud of his chosen American home (he purchased a duplex in the neighborhood five years ago) and looks forward to revealing its many wonders and historical curiosities. The first stop on the tour is…his pharmacy, which is probably not so different from your pharmacy, except that his shines with the aureate radiance of Patrick Stewart's approval.

“There are pharmacies much nearer to where I live,” he declares, “but I would not go anywhere else except this.”

“This” is a narrow mom-and-pop shop, not a national chain, not even a local chain, filled with a hodgepodge of knickknacks and condoms and lip balms and lotions and, unfortunately, not Patrick Stewart's prescription, which isn't yet available for pickup.

Stewart's name comes rushing forth at him from the back of the establishment—“Patrick!” “ 'Ey, Patrick!” “Hiya, Patrick!”—in a thick New Yawk deluge. If everyone were welcomed into stores this way, the entire economy would collapse because the only currency would be smiles. Stewart greets every employee by name, like Jimmy Stewart at the end of It's a Wonderful Life when he triumphantly returns to his home after failing to commit suicide. It doesn't matter that his medications are not ready; he is happy simply to be here in this fantastic regular drugstore with the people he loves. The pharmacist tells Stewart that he is looking well. Stewart shakes his head wistfully.

“That is my curse, John.” He projects his velvet voice up behind the elevated cash-register counter, as if to the rafters above a Broadway stage. “Like Cassandra, who could foresee the future, but her curse was nobody believed her: I always look well, so I never get sympathy.”

The drugstore employees beam at him.

“See you later!” calls Stewart.

Coat, $998, Michael Kors / Polo shirt, $148, pants, $175, by Michael Kors

Burgundy coat, $2,195, by Burberry / Shirt, $385, pants, $435, shoes, $750, by Burberry


For our next point of interest, Patrick Stewart and I follow the slope of Park Slope as it gradually descends toward the canal. It is a brisk day, and he walks briskly, bundled compactly in a black zip-up hoodie, leather jacket, leather gloves, and a pair of leather boots he bought in Reno. He likes the boots because he feels that their heels cause him to tip forward, which he corrects by standing even more ramrod straight. (Imagine an exactly vertical line. Now imagine a line that defies physics to become even straighter than that. That's Patrick Stewart.) He loves Reno because it's where his wife's family lives.

“I go there whenever I can,” he says.

Patrick Stewart, one of the most respected Shakespearean actors of all time, goes to Reno whenever he can.

Stewart stops on the sidewalk and gestures grandly toward the horizon, where the concrete Smith-Ninth Streets subway station rises out of the Brooklyn sprawl. “What we are looking at there”—he pauses for effect—“is the highest point on the New York subway system.”

The first thought that pops into my head is that the majority of the New York subway system operates underground, so in order to be taller than that, a structure need only be higher than something that is underground.

“Now, what about that?” prompts Patrick Stewart, smiling mischievously, daring me not to be amazed. “That will attract people, won't it?”

“Maybe don't charge for this tour?” I advise gently.

“Hahaha!” laughs Patrick Stewart. “It's actually great! Because if you walk to the end of the 4th Avenue platform, you can see the Statue of Liberty.”


Coat, $595, by Polo Ralph Lauren / Pants, $695, by Ralph Lauren / Sweater, $188, by Todd Snyder

Now Patrick Stewart and I are looking for a mass grave.

It's not a fresh mass grave. In fact, it was dug so long ago that historians and Patrick Stewart have at best a sketchy hunch about where it is. Anyone who might have been able to tell us has been dead for at least 200 years.

“The Maryland 400 were fighting for the United States in the Revolutionary War,” he says, sounding like a narrator the History Channel could not afford. “It was not the United States yet, of course—and they fought in a defensive action here on the slope of Brooklyn, 400 of them against 2,000 British soldiers. It was a kind of sacrificial strategy. The 400 held off the British advance long enough and even counterattacked, which enabled Washington and the rest of the Revolutionary Army to get across the East River and into Manhattan, where they were safe. Ten of the American soldiers walked away from that battle. Over 200 were buried here.”

“Here” is a trash-strewn parking lot next to an American Legion outpost. A mural depicting the soldiers has been largely covered by graffiti. Now I feel bad for telling Patrick Stewart he shouldn't charge for his tour. He's actually teaching me a lot. (Also unusual for a British knight: He made a personal request to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio to have a new memorial put up to honor the American patriots who may be buried here. He reports de Blasio told him: “I'm on it.”) “Anyway,” he says, continuing down the slope, “I've told you the story, and all it is is a concreted-over car park, but underneath the concrete is the mass grave. It's worth making, I think, a bit of a fuss of.”

Stewart himself comes from a family of soldiers. His brother Geoffrey was a member of the Royal Air Force in World War II, and Stewart remembers him pointing out a Nazi V2 rocket overhead one night as he carried young Patrick into the relative safety of an aunt's cellar. His father, a veteran of the British army, also enlisted in that war, despite being well over the maximum draft age. Stewart did not know his father for the first five years of his life. The man who returned home was a volatile alcoholic, frequently physically abusive to Stewart's mother. As an adult, Stewart has long campaigned against domestic violence, explaining that he does it “for my mother, [because] back then I could not help her.”

It wasn't until recently that he learned that post-traumatic stress disorder was a likely root of his father's behavior.

“My father got really bad press from me,” says Stewart, “because I would talk about him and try to analyze why he was so angry.” After a specialist told him that the elder Stewart demonstrated “classic symptoms of severe PTSD,” for which he never received treatment, Stewart saw his father's conduct in a new light. Following years of campaigning for the protection of women, he also became an advocate for veterans' mental-health treatment.

“I do that work for my family,” he says. “So I can speak for both of my parents when neither of them were ever given the opportunity to say, ‘I need help.’ ”

Stewart seems to derive comfort from order. He waits for the light to change and crosses at the corner. He has a raptor's sense of direction. There is never a beat of awkward silence on our tour, because he is so curiously well prepared for it, leading the way from site to site (the aforementioned Superfund canal; a newish Whole Foods store) as if hitting his marks on a stage. At one point, he even produces handwritten notes from his pocket and reads aloud about the Carroll Street Bridge: “Built in 1889, it is a retractile bridge. There are only four of them in the whole United States.”

“What's a retractile bridge?” I ask.

“This is,” he says, striding on ahead of me.

This March, Stewart will climb back into his wheelchair to reprise his role as the telepathic mutant Professor X in Logan, opposite Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Stewart is cagey when it comes to revealing details about the film; all he'll really say is that he and Hugh Jackman are in it.

“It's different, very different. It's not the usual X-Men movie. We are somewhat older than we were in the last one. Oh yes, we are.”

Early clips of the film revealed a type of violence more intimate than in the previous movies, in which several of the world's most blow-up-able cities were exploded by a variety of cartoonish means. Jackman reportedly took a pay cut for the film on the condition that it be allowed to hit screens with an R rating. (That R is probably more in the service of visceral fight scenes than explicit sexual content; trailers for the movie depict Jackman most often in the company of Stewart and an adorable child.)

Coat, $4,290, by Tom Ford / Sweater, $1,950, henley, $1,590, by Tom Ford / Necklace by Miansai

Coat, $1,280, MP Massimo Piombo / Shirt, $165, by Gitman / Vintage tie, $119, by Thomas Mason / Pants, $198, by Todd Snyder White Label / Shoes, $395, by Allen Edmonds / Socks by Gold Toe / Watch by IWC glasses (on counter) Persol

As for whether this will be his final X-Men movie (it is expected to be Jackman's), Stewart is coy. “It would be very appropriate if it were. But I've already died once in the X-Men movies, and I came back. I was vaporized by Famke Janssen—Jean Grey—in the third.”

Stewart and I pause the tour for lunch at a small Italian restaurant with old-school tin ceilings and new-school $14 farro salads. He wants spaghetti but is anxious about being described eating it in print, because it is a saucy, slurpish mess. He relaxes when I tell him I'll have spaghetti, too.

Shortly after we sit, a pretty young woman approaches from behind Stewart's shoulder and kneels at our table.

“I'm so sorry,” she begins in a rush. Stewart swivels his bald head to regard her. “Everybody says this to you. I—I really never do this, but I spent my younger years watching Next Generation with my parents, and just seeing you literally makes my heart... I'm shaking. I just wanted to say thank you. The show you guys created, literally, it bonded me and my parents.”

“Thank you so much.” Stewart looks in her eyes and extends his hand for a shake. “I love hearing that. Thank you.”

She departs. He fumbles with his menu, a touch abashed at the effusive compliments.

“How much did you pay that woman?” I ask.

“Oh, was it so obvious?” He grins. “She's a local actress. Needed the money.”

After lunch, he and I walk back to his apartment. I ask Stewart if he ever plans to retire, so he can enjoy the fruits of his labors.

He answers with the obsessive work ethic of a true New Yorker: “Without doing my job, I couldn't enjoy them.”

His wife, Sunny, a singer, buzzes him up to the apartment. The two of them met just a few blocks from here in 2008, when she was working as a waitress at a popular local pizza place. (The marriage is Stewart's third; he has two grown children.) Sunny is in the kitchen chatting with a friend, who tells Stewart he looks well.

“That is my curse,” begins Stewart. “I liken myself to Cassandra, who was given a great gift by the gods.…”

“Oh, my God,” says his wife with a laugh, rolling her eyes.

Caity Weaver is a GQ writer and editor.