Patrick Stewart Admits He's 'Pained' by His 'Practically Non-Existent' Relationships With His 2 Children
Patrick Stewart regrets his estranged relationships with his children.
The Star Trek: The Next Generation actor — who shares Daniel and Sophie Alexandra Stewart with his first wife, Sheila Falconer — admitted in a recent interview that he feels "significant grief" that they aren't currently in contact with him.
"Given that I’m separated from my children now — we don’t have relationships — they have become very important," the 83-year-old confessed to a news outlet.
"I never thought that this would happen, but both my children are in their 50s," he added. "They’re not children anymore, they’re adults. And my relationship with them is practically non-existent."
As for what broke the fragile bonds between them, Stewart shared that he "always put my acting work first, before my family."
Now that he's older, he claimed that "not a day goes by" that he doesn't feel "pained by the memory of my children," noting that he feels "responsible" because they became who they are "in part because of me and my influence or lack of influence on them."
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Stewart has opened up about his strained relationships with his kids and what he was like as a dad in past interviews. The Logan actor said that he "could’ve done better as a parent," in an article published back in 2009.
"I was just obsessed with my work and everything else took second place," he said. "I’m trying to correct that now wherever possible with my grandchildren."
Stewart tied the knot with his first wife in 1966. The pair divorced in 1990 after 24 years of marriage. In his memoir, Making It So, the X-Men star revealed that he developed a dependency on sleeping pills in the aftermath of his split from Falconer.
He wrote that he needed them in order "to get me the hours of restoration I needed to do my job properly." He eventually decided to stop taking them while he was on a break from filming, but sleep became "impossible."
He said that he would wake up with a "full-body feeling of panic, my legs sweating profusely, which had never happened before and hasn't since."
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Following his divorce from Falconer, he was married to Wendy Neuss for three years, from 2000 to 2003.
Stewart is currently wed to his third wife, Sunny Ozell, who he married in 2013.
Stewart spoke with the Irish Independent about his relationships with his kids.