Ian McKellen Honors Close Friend Patrick Stewart: ‘A Man to Rely On, to Admire and In My Case, Love’

McKellen remembered meeting Stewart "half a century ago" and shared one of his early memories of the revered actor

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart

Ian McKellen has paid tribute to his longtime friend and colleague, English actor Patrick Stewart, who died on Wednesday at 86.

In his remembrance, McKellen recalled meeting him “half a century ago” as young actors and how Stewart stayed true to his origins throughout his life. In a social media post, McKellen began his tribute by addressing his friend as “Sir Patrick Stewart.” In 2001, Stewart was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, known as an OBE, and in 2010, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to the arts.

“Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end,” McKellen wrote. “You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”

McKellen said that they first met when acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company “half a century ago,” although they weren’t performing in the same productions then. “My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek,'” said McKellen. At the time, he questioned whether Stewart should risk leaving the stage and losing himself in Hollywood.

Luckily, “he took the risk.” McKellen added, “thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.”

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While “America was his adopted home” (and where Stewart met his wife, singer Sunny Ozell), he “never forsook his origins.” McKellen, who included a photo of Stewart taken by the University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, said that the actor’s “proudest achievement” was his appointment as Chancellor of the university.

Stewart and McKellen’s friendship has been one of the most celebrated in Hollywood. In 2000, Stewart was cast as popular Marvel comic-book character Professor Xavier in X-Men, and would continue the role as Professor X in X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, and later in X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was in these films that Stewart built a deep friendship with McKellen, who played his character’s nemesis Magneto. Throughout his career, Stewart continued appearing onstage, notably joining McKellen for Waiting for Godot in 2009 and again in 2014.

“Going around with Patrick is like going around with the pope,” McKellen said of Stewart in 2023. “Not that people genuflect, but he’s touched so many lives.”

Jennifer Lawrence and Woody Harrelson at Los Angeles Premiere of 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2' in 2015

Being back on set as Katniss Everdeen for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping hit Jennifer Lawrence with a wave of nostalgia. For the first time in over a decade, Lawrence fell back into step alongside Josh Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson, the actress detailed during a recent appearance on the podcast Call Her Daddy.

“It was so crazy. It was the same crew. It was the same AD, who I’ve worked with a million times because I love him,” Lawrence said. “And with Josh and Woody … it was so emotional. Josh and I didn’t walk to the bathroom without our arms around each other. It was so beautiful.”

Last year, it was widely reported that Lawrence would reprise her role for Sunrise on the Reaping, the sixth film in the Hunger Games franchise, set for release on Nov. 20, with Hutcherson also returning as Peeta Mellark. What wasn’t noted at the time, however, was Harrelson’s participation in the film, which centers on the origin story of his character, Haymitch Abernathy.

“And Woody, obviously, came through the window of my hotel room uninvited,” Lawrence said. “It wouldn’t be the same if he listened to boundaries or used a door.”

Harrelson’s voice appeared in an early teaser for Sunrise on the Reaping, in which the official film logo was revealed. “I think these games are going to be different,” he said in the preview. Fans speculated the actor might return as a narrator in the film. The 21-year-old actor Joseph Zada leads Sunrise on the Reaping as Abernathy alongisde Mckenna Grace, who plays Maysilee Donner.

“Nobody can be Woody Harrelson but Woody Harrelson,” Nina Jacobson, who produces the Hunger Games franchise, told Variety last year. “But you have to find that mischief that he has in him inherently and try to understand, if you turn back time from the man you meet at the beginning of The Hunger Games, who he was before all of that, and why he became that.”

Zada hadn’t heard from Harrelson directly following his casting, but did receive a message from the actor’s niece. “He doesn’t have a phone,” he told Vanity Fair. “I’m sure I’ll speak to him eventually, but apparently he’s very happy for me.”

Russell Brand arrives at court ahead of his trial, where he faces rape and sexual assault charges at Southwark Crown Court on October 28, 2026 in London, England

Former actor Russell Brand finally took the stand in his rape trial — but he says he’ll be facing the charges and the jury alone.

The actor told jurors at London’s Southwark Crown Court Wednesday that he was unable to persuade a “single person” to testify on his behalf. When the lead attorney for his defense, Ian Winter, asked if anyone would touch him “with a bargepole,” Brand answered, “No.” “My entire life has been consumed by these allegations,” Brand said. “I have devoted myself to these matters.”

Brand, 51, faces multiple charges related to his interactions with six women between 1999 and 2009; one count of attempted indecent assault, three counts of rape, and three counts of sexual assault. He pleaded not guilty and has publicly denied the allegations. Prior to the public accusations, Brand was best known for his comedic work in Hollywood staples like 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the 2010 comedy Get Him to the Greek. (He was also a well-known former husband of pop star Katy Perry. The two divorced after 14 months.) In recent years, he had pivoted toward digital pundit work, creating podcasts centered on spirituality and anti-government conspiracies.

But in a 2023 documentary investigation, Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, multiple women accused Brand of predatory actions, ranging from abuse, assault, and rape. Following its release, six women independently went to police and accused him of past assaults.

Brand’s trial, which began on Oct. 12, will undoubtedly pit the women’s testimony about their experience with Brand against Brand’s own recollection of events. Prior to the criminal charges, Brand was public about his womanizing tendencies and often expressed remorse or regret for the ways he treated women, but has always maintained that his sexual encounters were consensual.

During opening statements for the prosecution, lead prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones argued that Brand’s own comments throughout his fame and the testimony of the women prove that Brand is a serial sexual predator who used the sexual demeaning of women as a means to an end. “The circumstances of the offending were as wide and as varied as the defendant’s career,” Karmy-Jones said. “His strong desire for some form of sexual contact was indiscriminate and voracious.”

For the past two weeks, the court has been hearing testimony from Brand’s accusers, both by playing their video interviews with police and with the victims taking the stand. One of the women, who accused Brand of assaulting her at a radio station around 2004, said Brand “lept on her” when she was leaving a room, grabbing her waist, bottom, arms, legs and roughly pinning her to a wall while kissing her as she fought. The room was full of people on Brand’s team — who she called his “entourage” — and she testified that they did nothing to stop it. During questioning, she said she didn’t go to the police because she was afraid of career repercussions.

“One, who is going to believe me?” she said. “Two, I could lose my job and I have a mortgage to pay.”

Another woman who claims Brand anally raped her while they were having consensual sex, fought back against the defense attorney’s implications that she consented to the entire night.

“I did not consent. We are not here to discuss my morality … I didn’t consent to what happened to me, I have said that repeatedly,” she said. “I carried that feeling of guilt and shame and I felt lots of things but particularly for exactly the reason that you are doing right here — that I brought it on myself. That just because you go somewhere willingly and the outcome in the end is not consensual, it’s a different scenario.”

On the stand Wednesday, Brand stated that he remembers sleeping with some of the claimants, but others he doesn’t remember at all. In all cases, he denies assaulting them and said that he often speaks during sex to confirm his partner is enjoying it. When his attorney asked for an example, Brand said, “I believe I would have been saying: ‘Am I doing this right, do you like this, is this OK?”

“Consent is fundamental, essential and necessary, and in many ways more important than sex itself,” he added.

The trial is expected to last at least another four weeks.

Danny Masterson lost his rape conviction appeal.

Danny Masterson’s bid to overturn his 2023 rape convictions and 30-year prison sentence was denied by a California appeals court on Tuesday, leading lawyers for the That ‘70s Show star to vow they’ll seek review in the state’s highest court.

In their 89-page ruling, obtained by Rolling Stone, a panel of three appellate justices rejected Masterson’s arguments that his trial judge improperly handled evidence, violated his right to a fair trial, and “exhibited hostility toward Scientology.” Masterson claimed the judge had demonstrated bias by “comparing Scientology to white supremacists, gangs, and Satanists,” according to his appeal filings.

The justices disagreed. “All of these statements, viewed in context, evidence no animosity toward Scientology,” they wrote.

The panel noted that Masterson himself had asked the trial court before his 2022 trial to limit references to Scientology, citing the public’s generally negative perception of the organization. During arguments over that request, the trial judge questioned why evidence involving Scientology would be considered “more inflammatory than, let’s say, evidence concerning street gangs, prison gangs, white supremacy, outlaw motorcycle clubs.” Such evidence “comes in all the time and it certainly is negative,” the trial judge observed.

“The jury in this case was not asked to determine the truth or falsity of Scientology doctrine or beliefs. The jury instructions clearly limited the purposes for which the jury was to consider Scientology evidence: to explain the victims’ delay in reporting defendant’s actions; to explain the victims’ behavior before, during, and after the charged crimes; to explain the witnesses’ ties to Scientology; and to evaluate the circumstances under which statements were made and the weight to give statements made by all of the witnesses. Admission of Scientology evidence for those purposes did not contravene the First Amendment,” the appellate justices said in their ruling. “Defendant fails to establish any abuse of discretion or First Amendment violation by the trial court.”

Masterson, a prominent Scientologist, was charged in 2020 with forcibly raping three women on different occasions during the height of his sitcom fame in the early 2000s. An initial trial ended with a hung jury, but a follow-up jury convicted him in May 2023, finding that he raped two of the Jane Does. Both trials included emotional testimony from the three women. They all said Masterson drugged them before forcibly raping them. They were practicing Scientologists at the time and testified that Church of Scientology officials protected Masterson.

The actor filed his direct appeal a few months after his conviction. He later filed a separate habeas petition claiming his former lead attorney failed to put on an adequate defense at his retrial.

The appellate court on Tuesday rejected both Masterson’s appeal of his convictions and his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In an email, his lawyers said they planned to seek review by the California Supreme Court while separately pursuing habeas corpus relief based on what they called “exculpatory evidence that was never presented to the jury.” They contend that the two women whose allegations led to Masterson’s convictions told friends their sexual encounters with him were consensual. The appellate justices were not persuaded that the evidence should have been admitted at trial or that it would have changed the outcome.

“Danny is serving a life sentence for crimes he did not commit. No one in California, not defendants and not victims who have actually been the victim of a sex crime, is safer by virtue of today’s unfortunate decision,” his lead appellate lawyer, Cliff Gardner, said in a statement.

Eric Multhaup, the lawyer leading Masterson’s habeas corpus challenge, called the ruling “fundamentally wrong.” He accused the appellate panel of dismissing the petition with “a one-paragraph summary of the one-sided evidence presented by the prosecution.”

“This cursory treatment reflects poorly on the administration of justice in the Court of Appeal and will be rectified by a petition to the California Supreme Court,” Multhaup said.

The One About Matthew Perry: Season 1. Matthew Perry in The One About Matthew Perry

It’s been three years since Matthew Perry was found dead in his Los Angeles home — a tragedy that struck both Hollywood stars and devoted fans of the hit NBC sitcom Friends.

Authorities later revealed that Perry, 54, drowned in his hot tub due to the “acute effects of ketamine” in his system. His death triggered a lengthy criminal investigation that saw Perry’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, his dealer Jasveen Sangha — often known by clients as the “Ketamine Queen” — and three others sentenced to multiple years in federal prison for providing Perry with the drugs. It was a devastating ending for an actor who had a life-long issue with substance abuse and was celebrated for his frank and honest revelations about his struggle.

Perry was best known for his role on Friends playing the acerbic and awkwardly charming Chandler Bing, a character that permanently shot him into the public eye. But many of his closest confidants remained firmly out of the spotlight and say the public was rarely aware of what was really happening in Perry’s inner circle and private life. Now, in a new three-part Netflix docuseries The One About Matthew Perry, they’re sharing never-before-heard stories about knowing and loving Perry.

None of the friends cast — Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, or Courtney Cox — participated in the documentary, but director Mary Robertson worked with many of Perry’s childhood friends and family, including his sister Mia Perry Bowick, who’s speaking publicly for the first time. The series charts Perry’s path from a child of divorce to a budding Hollywood actor to an overnight sensation, told through first-person interviews, archival footage and photos, and narration from Perry himself taken from past interviews and the audiobook of his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

“Ever since Matthew became Matthew Perry, I was always really afraid of and really skeptical of ever talking to anybody about my experience with him. And there’s certainly been a lot of opportunities,” Perry Bowick says in the docuseries. “But I have a lot to say about what happened. All great stories have comedy and tragedy in them. And that certainly was Matthew’s story.”

Here are six things we learned from The One About Matthew Perry.

By 1993, Perry, then in his early twenties, had been a working actor for several years but was still desperate for a breakout moment on screen. In the midst of auditioning, he came across a script titled “Friends Like Us,” which included a character named Chandler, who he said felt identical to him and “lept off the page.” He was desperate for a chance to make the character his own.

Perry said in a later interview that so many of his friends auditioned for the role of Chandler that he was actually well prepared by the time his agent secured him an audition. “I was very familiar with the script and very familiar with the character because a lot of my friends had been calling and saying, ‘There’s this guy on this show that is you. Can you help me with the audition?’” he said. “So much so that I knew all the material when I went in.”

Warren Littlefield, former president of NBC Entertainment, explains in the docuseries that the rest of the cast — Aniston, Kudrow, Schwimmer, LeBlanc, and Cox — were already signed on to the show. They were just missing one more star.

“There was anxiety because all of the casting was fairly easy except for the role of Chandler

With all the excitement, there was ‘Holy shit, where’s Chandler Bing?’ And then Matthew Perry came into the room,” Littlefield says. “He just nailed it. It was just like, ‘Where’s this guy been?”

Perry had his first audition on a Wednesday. On Monday, the entire cast had their first table read.

After its Sept. 1994 premiere, Friends became a surprise hit. The theme song, “I’ll Be There for You,” by the Rembrandts, charted on the Hot 100 in 1995 and each of the cast members became stars. Fame was exciting for Perry. But while friends and family say Perry was initially ecstatic about the attention, it quickly took over his life. “I was extremely happy to be famous. And then six months in, I was like ‘Uh oh. This didn’t fix what’s inside me,’” Perry said in an interview. “This didn’t do what I thought it was gonna do.”

Two of his closest childhood friends — Roger Castillo and David Pressman — describe watching Perry’s life change overnight as incredibly jarring. They were still close friends, but often had difficulty processing the reality of Perry’s place as a public figure. In 1996, movie star Julia Roberts guest starred on Friends and began dating Perry. When Perry and Roberts attempted to hang out with Castillo and Pressman, paparazzi swarmed the area. Eventually, Roberts and Perry went outside and posed so the photographers would take their photos and then leave. This kind of constant attention quickly became the norm.

“In the beginning I think he liked the fame,” Perry Bowick, Perry’s sister, says in the docuseries. “But at some point it did start to shift.”

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry noted that his complicated relationship to fame and suddenly being a person in the public eye exacerbated his existing struggles with mental health. There were feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness that he thought fame would fix. They didn’t.

Parts of Perry’s narration of his memoir also play in the docuseries. In one chapter of the book, he recalls early in his career his desperation getting so bad that he got on his knees on the floor of his apartment and prayed, “God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.”

“Three weeks later, I got cast in Friends,” Perry wrote. “And God has certainly kept his side of the bargain — but the Almighty, being the Almighty, had not forgotten the first part of that prayer as well.”

Perry’s early childhood was defined by constant travel. His mother was Suzanne Morrison, who worked as a former press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his father, John Bennett Perry, was an actor best known for his work on Old Spice commercials, Independence Day, and George of the Jungle. Perry’s parents were divorced when he was only one, and his mother married broadcaster Keith Morrison. Perry was raised traveling between his mother’s home in Canada and his father’s in California. When he was 14 years old, he had alcohol for the first time.

“I was in heaven,” Perry said. “And I thought to myself, ‘This must be the way normal people feel all the time.’”

His friends, Castillo and Pressman, describe drinking at parties when they were teenagers, often playing games, talking, laughing, and having fun. But they didn’t realize until they were older that Perry was most likely drinking more than them. Another close childhood friend, Marjorie Harris Newman, recalls one incident where the two drove home together after one of the above parties and got into an accident. When they got out of the car, she realized that Perry had been driving drunk.

“Later on I learned how secretive he was with the drinking — that he would drink by himself,” Newman says in the docuseries. “Alcohol probably quieted that very deep part of himself. And I think he felt becoming famous would fill that hole.”

While Perry was filming the 1997 rom-com Fools Rush In, he drove a jet ski and accidentally launched himself into the air, hurting his back. He was prescribed Vicodin and quickly developed a dependence.

“I had no idea what was going on. A doctor gave me a pill in a package and said take this when you’re done shooting. I did and then I felt this incredible euphoria. So why wouldn’t I take more?” he said in an interview. “I started to feel sick when I wasn’t taking them. Then you take three. Then you take four.”

After the film’s premiere, he went to rehab for the first time. Addiction would affect Perry for the rest of his life. The actor entered and exited rehab, but his filming schedule invited constant relapses. While filming The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis in 1999, actor Kevin Pollack remembers that he was unable to keep up with Perry’s drinking after hours. The crew would party on a private floor they called “Club Willis”

Jonathan Lynn, the film’s director, said that Perry was clearly struggling on set. “He would keep it under control as long as the work was going really well,” Lynn says in the docuseries. “But if anything went wrong or he felt like it wasn’t working, he would immediately turn to alcohol and pills. On all the films I’ve made, there’s always been a few people who drank a bit too much. But this was different.”

When Friends ended, Perry’s friends all say the actor was excited to work on more projects — especially since he believed that staying employed and focused helped him stay sober.

Shortly after Friends ended, he was cast in Aaron Sorkin’s television series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which was expected to be a hit following the success of Sorkin’s West Wing. But the show was cancelled after one season. In 2011, he created the ABC comedy Mr. Sunshine, starring as Ben Donavan, the overworked manager of a regional arena. The show was cancelled mid-season.

After these failures, Perry was in and out of rehab once again. But he left these programs with a renewed focus on drug policy reform and recovery advocacy. He turned one of his homes into a sober living center for men in recovery. He was outspoken about addiction awareness and even wrote and starred in a play, The End of Longing, based on his own struggle with substance abuse — all while continuing to act in one-off film and television projects.

“When he was sober, there was no greater positive influence on those who were suffering. And in my own life experience, when someone very close to me was struggling, I knew that he was the first person that I would reach out to for advice and assistance,” Pollack says in the docuseries. “[It was] almost like him finding clarity allowed him to be a superhero in that fight for others. But he couldn’t fight as well for himself.”

In 2021, Perry agreed to participate in a reunion celebrating the 25th anniversary of Friends. But most people didn’t know that he was still recovering from a near-fatal colon perforation. In 2018, Perry’s colon burst — complications from his years of opioid addiction. The actor spent over two weeks in a coma. It took months for him to be released from the hospital and he had rarely been seen in public following the complication.

“I think he was very nervous about coming back out. I think he wanted to be like, ‘I’m here. I’m good. Everything’s fine,’” Perry Bowick says in the docuseries. “Which was only sort of half true at that point. He was still very much on the mend.”

The production took the old Friends sets out of storage and filmed the cast interacting on the sound stage, discussing their favorite moments and experiences filming. But Perry looked ill — which became one of the most discussed moments of the entire reunion.

“I do remember at the time of the Friends reunion, Matthew focused on being sober, struggling with sobriety, knowing the import of this,” Pollack adds. “Long awaited. Lots of pressure. He hadn’t been on camera in a while. And you could see him struggling. It’s tough to watch because he’s just not himself.”

Perry started going to a ketamine clinic in an attempt to curb the instincts to use drugs and alcohol. The drug gave him “freedom and energy,” according to his friends. It helped him get in the headspace to write his 2022 memoir, which included a press tour where he spoke openly about his experiences at the height of his addiction.

“It felt like he was trying as hard as he could to be as authentic as possible with this giant spotlight on him,” Perry Bowick says.

Perry died on Oct. 28, 2023. But while his friends and family were still trying to gather the facts, TMZ had already reported how he died.

“It was shocking how it happened, but there was a really big part of me that had been prepping for this for a while,” Perry’s friend Pressman says. “I was not entirely surprised at all.”

Perry’s family had a private, open-casket funeral for the actor. According to Perry Bowick, the Friends cast members walked into the funeral together. After hugging the family, the group held hands and walked together to Perry’s casket.

“At the funeral, we arranged for just the family to have it be open casket for a little while for all of us. The funeral was very small — close friends and family,” she says. “The rest of the Friends cast all walked in together. I hadn’t seen them in easily 20 years. Jen Aniston was the first one of them to come up to me and give me a huge hug. But they all did.”

“And then, all five of them walked up to the casket holding hands and stood around him, crying,” Bowick adds.

Each of Perry’s close friends says they’ve had different ways to grieve the late actor and process his death. But Perry’s sister says she finds it easiest to think about Perry’s story in relation to his favorite song — “The Rainbow Connection,” which she describes as playful, sweet and melancholic all at the same time.

“How does Matthew’s story end? I still find a lot of solace in the fact that he was happy,” she says. “He said he was happy. He felt at peace.”

Eric Bauza, the Canadian voice actor who brought Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and dozens of other animated characters to life, has died at 46. His family announced his sudden death on Sunday, October 25, in a statement shared on his Instagram account. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner listed hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause of death, according to Variety.

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Born and raised in Scarborough, Toronto, Bauza built a career spanning more than 400 acting credits, becoming one of the principal voices behind Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes franchise. He voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Marvin the Martian and other characters, following in the footsteps of legendary voice actor Mel Blanc. Bauza worked with Warner Bros. for more than 15 years.

Beyond Looney Tunes, Bauza voiced Fozzie Bear in Disney Junior’s Muppet Babies, Puss in Boots in the Netflix series The Adventures of Puss in Boots and characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teen Titans Go! and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His film credits included Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Bauza won three Children’s and Family Emmy Awards for his voice performances in Looney Tunes Cartoons, Bugs Bunny Builders and Teen Titans Go!, earning recognition for work that reached audiences across generations.

He also publicly campaigned for the release of Coyote vs. Acme after Warner Bros. initially shelved the film in 2023. The project eventually secured distribution through Ketchup Entertainment, with Bauza reprising his role as Daffy Duck.

At the time of his death, Bauza was preparing to voice Daffy in Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, according to Variety. He leaves behind a son, from his union with Canadian-American animation director and producer Jessica Borutski.