"Captain Picard stood for the best of us," wrote William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk.

Patrick Stewart, the British actor whose calm demeanor and steely strength led the Star Trek television franchise into its next generation, died Wednesday at age 86. The actor suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

“We announce with great sorrow the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart yesterday at his home in Los Angeles, in the care of his beloved wife Sunny,” a Thursday post on Stewart’s Instagram account read in part. “We will forever cherish the peaceful ease and reflection on his face, an enduring reminder of his invincible grace.”

Through a long career, Stewart starred in everything from Shakespeare productions to superhero films, but his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation is firmly cemented in entertainment culture. Show creator Gene Roddenberry didn’t at first think Stewart, who was bald, could play the virile captain he had envisioned for the new Star Trek series. Stewart even had his wife ship his toupee over from London, and he wore it for an audition scene, but executives saw him with both styles and chose the bald look.

Stewart was stepping into big boots. While the original Star Trek only ran for three seasons, from 1966 to 1969, it soon became a pop culture fixture, and the success of the first Star Wars film in 1977 finally allowed Roddenberry to make feature films using his original cast. The success of those movies led to a new series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which launched in 1987 and took place about a century after the original show.

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