🪦 No more Captain Jean-Luc Picard...
From the BBC’s Sir Patrick Stewart: Actor who moved effortlessly between Star Trek and Shakespeare:
Sir Patrick Stewart, who has died at the age of 86, was a stage and screen great who balanced Hollywood stardom with an equally stellar career in classical theatre.
While many actors are typecast, he moved effortlessly from Shakespeare and Dickens to the command of the USS Enterprise and his famous wheelchair in X-Men.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Sir Patrick received multiple awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.
One of the world's most versatile actors, he mastered both comedy and tragedy, science-fiction and historical drama - despite the entertainment industry's traditional dislike of bald heads.
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At the age of 18, he had the traumatic experience of losing all his hair, a huge blow to an aspiring actor and self-conscious teenager - who worried that girls would no longer find him attractive.
He won a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company - playing a variety of roles across the company's repertoire.
And when not appearing as Oberon or Enobarbus, he made his TV debut as a fireman in a 1967 episode of soap opera Coronation Street.
His Broadway debut came in 1970 as Snout in Peter Brook's critically acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Over the next two decades, Stewart appeared in a variety of television roles without threatening to become a major star.
In 1974, he played Lenin in the BBC's 13-part drama series The Fall of Eagles.
He was a conspiratorial Roman soldier in the hugely popular I, Claudius and a Soviet spy in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People.
In 1984, Stewart left the RSC and moved to the National Theatre. Now in his mid-40s, he had only ever been unemployed for three weeks, but was rarely cast as a main character.
He'd landed a number of minor film roles: including playing Guinevere's father in Excalibur, a minstrel in Dune, and a riding instructor in Little Lord Fauntleroy.
And he was the voice of a small character in the animated film of Richard Adams' novel The Plague Dogs.
But even he described the first half of his career as "sound but never spectacular".
Then came the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
A producer named Robert L Justman was intent on reviving the Star Trek franchise, and was looking for a successor to William Shatner's legendary James T Kirk.
He had hoped to find a sexy, hirsute Frenchman to play the role - but chanced upon Stewart giving a lecture to his wife's Shakespeare class in Los Angeles.
Justman turned to his wife. "I said I think I've found our new captain," he said.
Stewart was intrigued but dubious.
He knew nothing about the original Star Trek and his great friend Sir Ian McKellen, told him not to throw his stage career away on a wild goose chase into space.
But in need of a boost to his finances, Stewart signed a six-year contract, firmly believing the show wouldn't last and he'd be back on the boards before long.
"Everybody told me it would be a flop," he recalled. "A friend of mine said, 'Get a suntan, make some money, go home.'"
He was, however, pleased that the producers didn't mind his baldness.
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Captain Picard was supposed to be French, but displayed a surprisingly English regard for both Shakespeare and Earl Grey tea.
And, after playing all those Shakespearean princes and dukes on the London stage, Stewart became fiercely proud of him, and of the show's ability to connect with younger audiences.
In addition to the television series, Stewart played Picard in four Star Trek films. But while commanding the Enterprise, he managed not neglect the theatre.
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For years, he performed a one-man version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol on Broadway - playing all 40 characters.
In 1995, he appeared as Prospero in a memorable performance of The Tempest and, two years later, he starred as Othello - who he presented as a white mercenary in a black African nation.
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Eventually, he took the role of Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men film franchise, essentially playing a telepathic Picard in a wheelchair.
His co-star was Sir Ian McKellen - the friend who'd warned him to avoid Hollywood - in the metal-bending role of Magneto.
Alongside his work in America, he won critical acclaim opposite Harriet Walter in Antony and Cleopatra in 2007.
And, in the same year, he played Macbeth for the first time - despite a 30-year age gap between him and Kate Fleetwood, playing Lady Macbeth.
But the critics refused to complain.
Critic Nicholas de Jongh decided it was "the best Macbeth I have ever seen", and hailed him as "one of our finest Shakespearean actors".
In 2010, Stewart was awarded a knighthood for his services to drama.
In 2009, he teamed up with Sir Ian again in Waiting For Godot.
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Forthcoming projects had included a final performance as Professor Charles Xavier in Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday, which will be released this Christmas.
And, if millions remember him only as the somewhat taciturn commander of the USS Enterprise, that prospect was not something that worried him.
"For huge numbers of people I will always be Jean-Luc Picard, and that's fine," he said. "I really believe we created an admirable individual."