From onscreen foes to real-life friends, Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen’s friendship was one for the books — and fans will never forget it.
The British actors — who knew each other for nearly 50 years ahead of Stewart’s death in October 2026 at the age of 86 — met in 1977 while working on Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
It wasn’t until decades later when they played enemies Professor Charles Xavier, or Professor X, and Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto, in 2000’s X-Men, that Stewart and McKellen forged their lifelong friendship.
“On those kind of movies, you spend more time sitting in your trailer than you do in front of the camera,” Stewart revealed on Wired’s “Web’s Most Searched Questions” YouTube series in February 2020. “So, Ian and I hung out together, drinking tea — and maybe in the afternoon, something a little stronger — and we got to know one another.”
The pair went on to play rivals in several X-Men movies and later joined forces on stage for Two Plays in Rep, before McKellen served as the officiant at Stewart’s 2013 wedding to Sunny Ozell.
Their final joint project was 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday.
Scroll down to relive McKellen and Stewart’s bromance:
