Patrick Stewart’s cause of death: What is Lewy body dementia?
Patrick Stewart’s cause of death: What is Lewy body dementia?
Raechal ShewfeltThu, October 29, 2026 at 10:27 PM UTC
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Patrick Stewart on June 9, 2024Credit: Stefanie Keenan/GettyKey Points -
Actor Patrick Stewart died Oct. 28. He was 86.
The Star Trek actor’s family attributed his death to Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
The late Robin Williams also struggled with Lewy body dementia before his death in 2014.
The family of Sir Patrick Stewart, Star Trek’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard and Prof. X in the X-Men, revealed Thursday that he died a day earlier of both Alzheimer’s disease and, a less commonly discussed diagnosis, Lewy body dementia.
It’s a condition that’s actually the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer’s, according to the Mayo Clinic. Protein deposits called Lewy bodies “develop in nerve cells on the brain,” and they affect the parts of the brain used for memory, movement, and thinking.
On a daily basis, this can present similarly to Parkinson’s disease, with patients experiencing tremors, difficulties walking, slow movement, and rigid muscles. Long-term, they face a decline in mental abilities and can hallucinate.
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Other symptoms include trouble sleeping, poor regulation of bodily symptoms, and depression.
The disease affects more men than women, the medical center reports. People older than 60 or those with a family member diagnosed with Lewy body dementia or Parkinson’s disease are more likely to face it.
Fans of the late Robin Williams might recognize it from the conversations around his death on Aug. 11, 2014. The comedian died by suicide at 63.
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His own struggle with the progressive neurodegenerative disease was captured in the 2020 documentary Robin’s Wish.
Susan Schneider, the Aladdin star’s widow, said in a statement when the trailer was released, “Armed with the name of a brain disease I’d never heard of, I set out on a mission to understand it, and that led me down my unchosen path of advocacy. With invaluable help from leading medical experts, I saw that what Robin and I had gone through, finally made sense — our experience matched up with the science. And what I discovered along the way was bigger than me, and bigger than Robin. The full story was revealed during the making of this film and it holds the truth that Robin and I had been searching for.”
In addition to Stewart and Williams, Golden Girls star Estelle Getty, Downton Abby actress Nathalie Baye, and CNN founder Ted Turner all suffered from the disease before their deaths in July 2008, April 2026, and May 2026, respectively.
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ star Patrick Stewart in 1987Credit: Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty
Stewart had continued working until the end, and he told TV Insider in what appears to be his final interview that he had more to give.
“I still continue to receive interesting offers and I love being challenged by new work, like voicing a pig’s head in Riz Ahmed‘s brilliant new series Bait,” Stewart said in the story published July 7. “I can’t imagine ever officially ‘retiring.’”
He added, “I’ll always and forever be an actor.”
His last film role is in Avengers: Doomsday, which is scheduled to debut in theaters on Dec. 18.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
