A bromance for the ages! Patrick Stewart hit London on Wednesday, June 10, to support his longtime best friend Ian McKellen at the premiere of McKellen’s new movie, Mr. Holmes.
Stewart, 74, attended the celebratory affair at ODEON Kensington with his wife, Sunny Ozell, by his side, but all of his attention was on his pal. The Star Trek actor grinned as he greeted McKellen, 76, giving him a big kiss and a tight embrace as they said hello.
McKellen leads Mr. Holmes as none other than famed detective Sherlock Holmes, starring in the Bill Condon-led crime drama alongside Laura Linney, Colin Starkey, and Hattie Morahan, among others. The release precedes McKellen’s upcoming role in X-Men: Apocalypse — a franchise in which he and Stewart have starred together multiple times.
The two British actors have been friends for decades and McKellen even officiated Stewart’s wedding ceremony to Ozell in 2013. Stewart also regularly shares cute photos of himself with his friend via Instagram.
“We fell into each other’s arms because of our similarities in our career, and because of our age and because we like the same sort of things — despite the fact that he’s from Yorkshire and I’m from Lancashire!” McKellen told The Huffington Post in 2014 of his fellow Englishman friend. “That’s the big difference between us. If Patrick does something other people think is a bit strange, I just say he’s Yorkshire!”
“There are so many parallels in our careers and our lives,” chimed in Stewart. “We’re both Northerners; He’s a Lancastrian and I’m a Yorkist, and he went to a great University but I left school when I was 15. But he was successful and became a star immediately. I saw him and I was amazed, overwhelmed by the quality of his work. I started our relationship as a fan. He wouldn’t know who I was back then. Then we came into the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] together… Bryan Singer cast us in the first X-Men movie and we had adjoining luxury trailers. Of course, it was movie making so we spent more time sitting in our trailers than on the set. We got to know one another and that’s when the bond began.”
