Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home at age 86, spoke candidly in the years before his death about what he described as a “practically non-existent” relationship with his two adult children.
In an October 2023 interview with the Irish Independent, the actor said he felt “significant grief” over his distance from son Daniel, 58, and daughter Sophie, 54, whom he shared with ex-wife Sheila Falconer.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not pained by the memory of my children, who they were and by a sense of responsibility that they became who they are in part because of me and my influence or lack of influence on them,” Stewart said.
He acknowledged that his career had come first. “I always put my acting work first, before my family,” he said in the same interview.
Stewart was also asked whether his portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” reflected the father he wished he’d had. “I think it might have been more the one I wished I was,” he said, adding that it had been hard to be the kind of father he wanted to be.
“Given that I’m separated from my children now, we don’t have relationships, they have become very important,” he said. “I never thought that this would happen, but both my children are in their 50s, they’re not children anymore, they’re adults. And my relationship with them is practically non-existent.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d addressed the subject. In a 2009 interview with the Independent, Stewart said he “could’ve done better as a parent, when [his] kids were little,” explaining, “I was just obsessed with my work and everything else took second place.” He said then that he was “trying to correct that now whenever possible” with his grandchildren, and that “my own children seem to have forgiven me.”
Representatives for Sophie and Daniel did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Page Six.
His life and final months
Stewart married Sheila Falconer in 1966; the couple divorced in 1990. He later married Wendy Neuss in 2000, divorcing her three years later, and married Sunny Ozell in 2013. He was in Ozell’s
