𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In 2013, he married his third wife – singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell – in Nevada.

Sir Ian McKellen officiated at the ceremony, which had to be restaged at a Los Angeles restaurant when someone discovered that his legal power to do so did not extend to the Silver State.

A year later, the two knights took their talents to Broadway, alternating performances of Waiting for Godot with Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land.

Sir Patrick made a video for Amnesty International on the subject of domestic violence, referencing his father’s brutality towards his mother.

Once named the third greatest Yorkshireman after Michael Palin and Sean Bean, he never lost touch with his roots – keeping a house in God’s Own Country, and remaining a lifelong supporter of Huddersfield Town football club.

Forthcoming projects had included a final performance as Professor Charles Xavier in Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday, which will be released this Christmas.

And, if millions remember him only as the somewhat taciturn commander of the USS Enterprise, that prospect was not something that worried him.

“For huge numbers of people I will always be Jean-Luc Picard, and that’s fine,” he said. “I really believe we created an admirable individual.”