Sir Patrick Stewart, the legendary British actor best known for portraying Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek" and Professor Charles Xavier in the "X-Men" franchise, has died at 86, according to a statement shared on his Instagram account.
Stewart died Wednesday at his Los Angeles home, surrounded by family and friends and cared for by his wife, Sunny, following a battle with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia, the statement said.
This is a developing story; check back later for updates.
Fox News Channel maintained its viewership lead among cable news rivals throughout October, according to Nielsen Media Research data.
The network reached an average of 1.1 million total day viewers Monday through Sunday, more than 50% of the share of the cable news audience and topping the combined audiences of MS NOW and CNN.
MS NOW trailed in second place with 588,000 average total day viewers while CNN averaged just 402,000.
Fox News commanded the lead in primetime as well, averaging 1.7 million total viewers. MS NOW came in second with 925,000 total viewers and CNN came in third with 598,000.
October marked Fox News Channel's 68th consecutive month leading in both daytime and prime-time viewership among the other cable news networks.
"The Five" maintained its status as the most-watched show in all cable news with 2.7 million total viewers, while "Jesse Watters Primetime" also continued its streak as the most-watched cable news show in primetime with 2.3 million viewers.
Meanwhile, Fox News also continues to make great strides in the digital landscape. Throughout 2026, Fox News has collected more than 3.8 billion views on YouTube, making it the most-watched news brand on the platform, according to data from Emplifi.
FIRST ON FOX — Angel Studios is drawing a line in the sand against Hollywood's approach to entertainment, announcing sweeping new content standards that ban on-screen sex, nudity and certain profanity while promising millions of paying members the power to decide which movies and television shows make the cut.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Angel Studios co-founder and Chief Content Officer Jeff Harmon said the entertainment industry has increasingly lost touch with the families it once served, prompting his company to establish what it calls "The Angel Promise."
"I think Hollywood generally kind of lives in a bubble," Harmon said. "These are excellent craftsmen. They're the best storytellers in the world. Hollywood has built the best storytelling infrastructure in the world."
"But at the same time, they've kind of drifted more and more away from the values-based audience that they used to serve," Harmon said. "And with that, in our view, as brothers and as fathers, as a father, Hollywood hasn't been giving me consistently what I need. Once in a while, you get a good one, but you have to sift through all these things to find your good movies and your good stories."
The new initiative, announced Thursday, establishes three core commitments governing Angel's entertainment offerings, namely, audience approval of content, strict standards involving sex and language, and expanded parental controls.
"We promise there's never going to be nudity, and there'll never be sex on screen," Harmon said, explaining that families participating in the Angel Guild will not have to worry about encountering such material when evaluating potential projects.
The company is also drawing a firm boundary around profanity, pledging that Angel's original productions will not misuse God's name.
"This is a completely unique one," Harmon said. "This has never really happened in Hollywood history."
Harmon described the restriction as part of the company's effort to build trust with religious families.
"What we promise our viewers is that this timeless principle that's thousands of years old, and we're a very faith-friendly studio, is that we're not going to have misuse of God's name on the system on any Angel original content," Harmon said. "So any content we create. Where we are originating, meaning it comes to Angel first, those shows, those TV shows and movies, will not have misuse of God's name, so that families of faith, 'cause we're a faith-friendly studio, can trust that language won't be there."
Under the new standards, the company also prohibits use of the F-word in its stories and profanity in titles submitted for children ages 12 and younger.
The announcement represents a significant effort to distinguish Angel from traditional Hollywood studios, with the company placing its audience at the center of decisions about what gets produced and distributed.
Harmon said the Angel Guild, which has approximately 3 million paying members, gives viewers an opportunity to approve or reject projects before they enter the company's entertainment ecosystem.
"This is the first time in history that a major Hollywood studio, or top 10 studio in the United States, has come and said, we're going to let the audience have a veto right," Harmon said.
Under Angel's stated policy, films and television series must receive a score of at least 70 out of 100 from Guild members to qualify for inclusion in its entertainment ecosystem.
Harmon said the founders' experiences raising children helped shape the new standards.
"Angel was co-founded by four brothers and a cousin," he said, adding that the founders have 34 children between them.
The goal, he explained, was to create entertainment that parents could trust without having to sift through potentially objectionable content.
The third component of the Angel Promise focuses on parental controls. Angel says Guild members will help establish recommended age ratings and plain-language descriptions of potentially sensitive material, while new controls in the Angel app will allow parents to tailor viewing choices to their families.
Harmon said the broader ambition is to reshape the relationship between filmmakers and audiences.
"Our goal was to set out and try to fix this problem of kind of stepping out of the Hollywood bubble and stepping into middle America's shoes," he said.
The company says its Guild has paid out nearly $300 million to filmmakers, while Harmon said more than 100 films were available for members to vote on at the time of the interview.
For Harmon, the new promise is about establishing permanent standards that will outlast any individual film, filmmaker or executive, and give families greater influence over the entertainment they consume.
Some of the studio's prominent recent films include "David" and "The King of Kings."
Jon Lovitz refused to dwell on the past and instead took the high road in response to claims made by Crystal Hefner.
In a recent appearance on the "Lisa Guerrero Unleashed" podcast, Hugh Hefner's widow marked Lovitz, 69, as Playboy Mansion's "No. 1 customer," even claiming he's "one of the biggest pervs" in Hollywood.
The "Rat Race" actor was spotted leaving a restaurant in Los Angeles on Tuesday night, where he admitted to feeling pride about his starting role on the roster.
"Any time someone says I’m No. 1, it’s a compliment," Lovitz said before doubling down on his admiration for the late media mogul.
"Hugh Hefner was one of the nicest, most generous people I’ve ever met, and all of his friends know it," Lovitz said. "That’s all I have to say about that."
On Tuesday's episode, Crystal criticized the "Saturday Night Live" star for allegedly being a "lurker" at the Holmby Hills house, once known for its opulent parties.
"He would be up there all the time," Crystal claimed. "His eyes would go front to back [looking at] all the women that walked through the door at the party."
On her own "After the Mansion" show, Crystal called out another Hollywood star and claimed that Jack Nicholson treated the Playboy Mansion like his own hot spot.
"They used to call it Jack Nicholson’s drive-thru at one point because he would drive up, grab some food or whatever else he could get there and leave," she claimed.
Nicholson's daughter, Lorraine, once shared her own experiences at the famous mansion where she spent her childhood playing with Hef's sons, Marston and Cooper.
"People assume that my father took me to the Mansion, but they assume wrong," she wrote in a 2024 essay for Vanity Fair. "In fact, I can venture with confidence that I spent more time there than my father ever did."
Crystal alleged her late husband was obsessed with Hollywood lore and stardom.
"One thing that mattered most to Hef was fame," she claimed. "Any celebrity was treated extremely well whenever they visited. He would have Bill Maher for chats, hang with Berry Gordy of Motown, and then you’d see plenty of other people there. Buzz Aldrin, the original Catwoman."
"He taught me love. He taught me kindness. He gave me life. He really did," she explained. "He opened my mind, my world, to all of these opportunities and experiences I would have never in my lifetime been able to have."
Barrie was known for her small screen roles as Barney Miller’s wife on "Barney Miller," a police series that ran from 1975 to 1982, and as Brooke Shields’ grandmother on "Suddenly Susan."
She was nominated for an Academy Award for 1979’s "Breaking Away," and she won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for 1964’s "One Potato, Two Potato."
She lost to Meryl Streep for "Kramer vs. Kramer" at the Oscars.
She also played Goldie Hawn’s mother in 1980’s "Private Benjamin."
Barrie was also a prolific Broadway actress who was nominated for a Tony for her performance in the original 1970 cast of Stephen Sondheim’s "Company."
The 95-year-old made her Broadway debut in "The Wooden Dish" in 1955 after she moved to New York when she graduated from college in Texas, telling the Akron Beacon Journal in 1963 that she only went there because of a man.
"To tell you the truth, the only reason I went was because I had a boyfriend who was living there. We were supposed to get married but couldn’t right away," she said. "Since I had gone to all the trouble of moving to New York, I figured I might as well try to act."
Barrie told the Westside Rag in 2024 she has been acting for 55 years, and "I think it took 45 years to become a good actor. I think it takes that long. You strip away everything. You strip away all the junk. You strip away all the egos. You strip away all the temperament, and you just deal with the person you’re playing. That’s all you have to do, but it takes years to learn that."