Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE (born 13 July 1940) is an English film, television and stage actor. He has had a distinguished career in theatre for nearly fifty years, including performances as various characters in Shakespearean productions. However, he is perhaps most widely known for his television and film roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films.

Stewart was born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, the son of Gladys (née Barrowclough), a weaver and textile worker, and Alfred Stewart, a Regimental Sergeant Major in the British Army who served with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and previously worked as a general labourer and as a postman. Throughout childhood, he endured great poverty and disadvantage, an experience which influenced his later political and ideological beliefs. In 2006 Stewart made a short video against violence for Amnesty International, in which he recollected his father's physical attacks on his mother and the effect it had on him as a child. He attended Crowlees C of E Junior and Infants School, and in 1951, aged 11, he entered Mirfield Secondary Modern School, where he continued to study drama. At age 15, Stewart dropped out of school and increased his participation in local theatre. He acquired a job as a newspaper reporter and obituary writer, but after a year, his employer gave him an ultimatum to choose acting or journalism. He quit the job. His brother tells the story that Stewart would attend rehearsals during work time and then invent the stories he reported. Stewart also trained as a boxer.

In 1957, at the age of 17, he embarked on a two-year acting course at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He lost most of his hair by the age of 19 but he successfully marketed himself to theatre producers after performing an audition with and without a wig, heralding his performance as "two actors for the price of one!"