On Wednesday, 28 October 2026, Sir Patrick Stewart died at the age of 86. He played one of my key role models growing up, so it feels right to say a few words about him and the impact he had on me.
Stewart is probably best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. When I was a kid, watching reruns of the show was a daily pleasure. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was learning a great deal from Picard (through Stewart) about how a person ought to carry themselves.
Picard, I think, embodied all the right values of a leader, in all the right proportions. He was a thinker and not a fighter. Picard preferred to use diplomacy and intelligence to solve problems, though he was not afraid to engage in conflict when he had to. He was firm but fair. The people who served under him always knew exactly what he expected of them and where they stood with him. He praised in public and disciplined in private.
He was a deeply self-cultured man, someone who understood the importance of continuous personal growth: archaeology, literature, music, Shakespeare. And he dedicated his life to a mission of bringing people, cultures and civilisations together under a banner of cooperation and knowledge sharing. He had a genuine respect for other cultures and their ways, while still keeping and appreciating his own culture and values.
Picard understood that with great power comes great responsibility. To him, that meant the responsibility to restrain power just as much as the responsibility to use it when necessary.
He was not afraid of conflict when it was needed for the greater good. He understood that being strong comes with a duty to defend those who are weaker, or who need protecting. But he never mistook having power for having the right to use it freely.
Watching Picard taught me to act fairly and transparently, whatever the circumstances. He upheld the values of a liberal society, values I hold dear. “With the first link, the chain is forged…”
It would do Patrick Stewart a disservice if we talked only about the Picard character he played. Much of what made Picard admirable was there in Stewart as well.
Stewart left school at fifteen in Mirfield, Yorkshire, and largely educated himself into one of the great Shakespearean actors of his generation. Playing Picard, the self-cultivated, self-made man, was not a stretch for Stewart.
He grew up seeing his father’s violence towards his mother. Rather than let that define him, he spent decades campaigning against domestic abuse. He also supported veterans through Combat Stress, having come to believe that his father’s behaviour came from untreated shell shock after the war. Stewart championed reason and empathy, and used his strength and platform to defend the vulnerable.
I always understood the term “role model” to mean someone exemplary: a person whose behaviour is worth imitating, someone we choose to look up to. Picard was that for me.
It was only when I became a father that I realised that meaning had been skewed in my mind. I am a role model, whether I like it or not. I am in the role, and I am being watched. My kids see how I behave in it. I am modelling for them how to be a father.
So I no longer think of role models as those exemplary cases we get to pick. If you are in the role, you are a role model, whether you choose to be or not. The only question is what kind.
Patrick Stewart, and the captain he played, modelled lessons for me that I will remember for the rest of my life.