Before Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen became known as one of Hollywood’s most popular bromances, they were two longtime acquaintances passing the time in neighbouring trailers on a Toronto film set.
Stewart, the legendary British actor best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men, died Wednesday, Oct. 28, at his L.A. home from complications related to Lewy body dementia. He was 86.
As fans and fellow actors pay tribute, there’s a little-known Toronto connection behind their friendship!
In 1999, Stewart arrived in the city to film the first X-Men movie, released the following year. He played Professor X opposite McKellen’s Magneto, so two rivals on screen. Off-screen, though, the actors had known each other for years without becoming very close.
That all changed between takes in Toronto. Their trailers were parked side by side, and Stewart and McKellen spent a lot of their downtime chatting, drinking tea and discovering just how much they had in common!
In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, Stewart said that although he had admired McKellen since their Royal Shakespeare Company days, the two had barely known each other before the film.
“It was the element that made me most grateful for X-Men: that it brought Ian into my life,” he noted.
Their friendship endured long after filming wrapped. They went on to share the screen in more X-Men movies and appeared together onstage in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land. McKellen even officiated Stewart’s wedding to singer Sunny Ozell in 2013.
In a heartfelt Insta tribute shared Thursday, McKellen wrote that Stewart “wore his heart on his sleeve,” describing him as “a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”
The original X-Men also left its mark on the GTA. Casa Loma served as the interior of Xavier’s mansion, while Parkwood Estate in Oshawa provided the exterior. Roy Thomson Hall also appeared in a scene featuring Xavier and Magneto.
Stewart’s ties to the city, however, go back much further. In May 1975, nearly 25 years before X-Men, he performed at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Hedda Gabler, alongside Glenda Jackson and Timothy West.