Sir Patrick Stewart who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard

To Star Trek fans, he will always be Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but to his father- in-law, Sir Patrick Stewart is known as ‘son’ – even though the actor is five years OLDER than his wife’s dad.

The 75-year-old star is married to musician Sunny Ozell, who is 39 years his junior. And although Ozell’s father was initially ‘not thrilled’ with the romance, the two men have grown to be friends.

Stewart said: ‘He rings me up and says, “Hey son, it’s your father here.” ’

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine today, Ozell added that the hardest part of their relationship was meeting Stewart’s children from his first marriage to Sheila Falconer, who are now aged 42 and 47.

She said: ‘That was territory I trod on very lightly. I didn’t want to force myself on them but they were very welcoming.’

And she said the age gap was irrelevant. ‘He is so youthful and I guess I’m kind of an old worry wart so we bridge the gap. It doesn’t come up much. He’s in better shape than me, which infuriates me.’

And Stewart said: ‘I remember my 40th birthday vividly and I swear to God it was last week. I have a little bit of arthritis but I don’t feel any different.’

The couple met through a mutual friend in 2008 when American singer-songwriter Ozell was working as a waitress in New York. They married in September 2013 on the banks of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in a wedding officiated by Stewart’s best friend and fellow actor Sir Ian McKellen.

Both later confessed that while the ceremony was touching, the reception was a boisterous affair.

'I cannot fully understand this age thing': He’s 75, she’s 36. But when Patrick Stewart met Sunny Ozell it was instant atTrektion!

By Cole Moreton for Event Magazine

There may be an intergalactic 39-year age gap between them, but Star Trek superstar Patrick Stewart tells Event he went into orbit when he first heard Sunny Ozell singing in a jazz club. Now married, they’re boldly going where few couples have gone before – on tour!

‘It was an immediate attraction. When she came over to offer us dessert on the house – because her manager had insisted – we got talking,' said Patrick Stewart on first meeting Sunny Ozell in Brooklyn in 2008

Sunny Ozell was starstruck when her future husband walked through the door.

‘I was a little freaked out by seeing Patrick Stewart in my restaurant,’ says the singer, who was working as a waitress in a pizzeria in Brooklyn at the time.

That’s not surprising, given that he has one of the most famous faces on this or any other planet.

The boldly bald actor with the commanding presence and deep, Shakespearean voice is best known as Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies, or as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

He was fast approaching 70, and running away from the Hollywood lifestyle by appearing as Macbeth at a theatre nearby.

Ozell had just turned 30, and was making a name for herself as a singer in the jazz clubs of New York. Despite the age gap, they still felt a powerful attraction.

Seven years later, they are man and wife, sitting close together in the corner of a modest bakery in Hampstead, north London, where they have come for coffee and pastries and to talk publicly for the first time about how they got together – as she launches her debut album, Take It With Me.

It’s a gorgeous, moody, late-night kind of record, on which Ozell and her band of accomplished New York players blend jazz, folk and Americana. They cover songs by some of the greats, including Randy Newman, Roy Orbison and Tom Waits.

Stewart has been tweeting about it, having lately bloomed into one of the most entertaining Twitter users.

The stern-looking actor has shown his lighter side since he met Ozell, dressing up as a lobster, wearing a dancing Santa hat and auctioning the chance to have a selfie taken with him and his friend Ian McKellen, all for charity.

The two actors even shared a kiss on the red carpet outside the premiere of Mr Holmes in June, with Ozell watching and grinning.

Patrick is best known as Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies, or as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has also lately bloomed into one of the most entertaining Twitter users

McKellen registered as a minister with the Universal Life Church, which celebrates freedom of religion, in order to officiate at Stewart and Ozell’s wedding on the shores of Lake Tahoe two years ago.

But I want to take the couple further back, to their first meeting on that night in Brooklyn in 2008.

‘It was an immediate attraction,’ says Stewart. ‘When she came over to offer us dessert on the house – because her manager had insisted – we got talking.

'She very kindly said she wanted to see Macbeth and then I gave her my mobile phone number.’

Stewart has gone unrecognised in the cafe until now, with his famous dome covered by a flat cap, but suddenly he proclaims like Picard facing down a Klingon.

‘Rule 101: don’t give out your number to somebody you don’t know!’ The chap at the next table nearly chokes on his latte.

Star Trek and X-Men have some pretty extreme fans. If she had been one of them it could have been a disaster, so what was he thinking?

‘Instinct is everything in a situation like that,’ says Stewart, who had only recently divorced his second wife, Wendy Neuss.

‘I felt I was talking to a really nice, intelligent, interesting, gorgeous woman. It’s rare that those elements all come together at the same time.’

Their first date was unusual, to say the least: she came to see him in Macbeth, an intense production that ended with his severed head brandished on stage, dripping blood. Exhausted by the play, she decided that both he and it were too much for her.

‘I was on the verge of leaving when the company manager came and found me. I was thinking, “How am I supposed to talk to this person?”’

Stewart laughs. ‘I gave you a glass of wine, excuse me!’

They went out for dinner, and later became lovers.

‘Initially it was really nice and slow and casual,’ she says. ‘We would spend Monday nights together, because neither of us were working.’

They went first to see a performance of songs by Sondheim, then to a Paul Simon show.

‘Music was part of this from the beginning. My musical knowledge has soared since I met Sunny,’ he says.

In return, he was able to introduce her to some of her heroes.

'Talent is very attractive. Never mind what anybody looks like. When you hear wonderful music, the appeal is almost irresistible,' said Patrick on seeing Sunny sing for the first time, at a club on the Lower East Side

‘I would never normally have the guts to go backstage and say, “I’m Patrick Stewart and I’m here to see Paul Simon” – but because I was with a musician, I felt able to do so.’

They both knew what was at stake when he came to see her sing for the first time, at a club on the Lower East Side.

‘A lot of my relationships with girlfriends in the past have been predicated on how good their acting is. This is embarrassing to admit, but they really were.

'I could never feel I could be intimate with somebody whose acting I didn’t admire.’

The same went for singing, it turned out.

‘She came on very late at night and by the time she did I was almost at the point of thinking, “This is going to be a disaster. I should go now and not return any calls.” But then she sang The Tennessee Waltz. It was beautiful. I had never heard it sung that way. I was very impressed.

'Talent is very attractive. Never mind what anybody looks like. When you hear wonderful music, the appeal is almost irresistible.’

This is all very lovely but we can’t go on without talking about the galactic-sized elephant in the room: their age difference. Stewart is now 75 years old, and his wife is 36.

‘He is so youthful and I guess I’m kind of an old worry wart, so we bridge the gap,’ she says.

‘It hasn’t come up much. He’s in better shape than I am physically, which infuriates me.’

Stewart seems pretty agitated, suddenly. ‘I cannot fully understand this age thing. I’m 75. It’s not affectation, I honestly don’t know what happened, how I got here.’

She giggles. ‘How the hell you got so old?’

He says, ‘Yeah, absolutely. I remember my 40th birthday vividly and I swear to God it was last week. I have a little bit of arthritis but I don’t feel any different and I don’t feel I behave or look that different.’

She certainly does: Sunny Ozell was only 18 months old when her husband turned 40.

‘Right now, what my age means is that I go to a load of memorial services,’ he says.

The latest of his friends to die is the British actor Roger Rees, best known as Lord John Marbury in The West Wing.

‘This has been a horrible start to the year. My generation – some of them younger than me – are going.’ His voice cracks and his eyes glisten. ‘I get this urge to say, “Don’t go!”’

Remarkably, Ozell’s husband is five years older than her own father.

‘My dad was not thrilled, at first,’ she admits.

Now they are friends though, says Stewart. ‘He rings me up and says, “Hey son, it’s your father here.”’

‘The trickiest bit was meeting his kids, who are 42 and 47,’ she says. ‘That was territory I trod on very lightly. I didn’t want to force myself on them... but they were very welcoming.’

What about having children of her own?

‘I never wanted kids for myself but I love children.

'One of Patrick’s grandkids [Stewart has two children from his first marriage, to Sheila Falconer] – a 12-year-old girl – is just now starting to get that it’s funny to call me grandma.’

Sit Ian McKellen registered as a minister with the Universal Life Church, which celebrates freedom of religion, in order to officiate at Patrick and Sunny’s wedding on the shores of Lake Tahoe two years ago

Ozell kept her waitressing job for five years after they met, not wanting to surrender her independence and live off his wealth.

‘That life had been so hard won for me that I was reluctant to just give it up. I would go to the Olivier Awards in London then take a red-eye flight back to New York and work in the restaurant the next day. I was leading a weird double life.’

That changed after their wedding, which was announced with a Twitter photo of the pair of them submerged up to the neck in a ball pit with the words, ‘Yes, married.’

She still has a place in Brooklyn but they mostly divide their time between a country house in Oxfordshire and his apartment overlooking the Thames in Bermondsey, London.

‘I was very homesick,’ he says. ‘I imagined I would live and die in LA. I developed a phobia that I would get knocked down by a car in Beverly Hills, on Rodeo Drive, and I would be lying there on the tarmac dying, thinking. “S***, I didn’t want it to be like this.”’

Later this year they will both go on the road with her band to promote the album. Will he be any help?

‘I get coffee. I carry instruments.’

He can’t play any instruments, but he can sing, and in September he will do a concert version of My Fair Lady with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

‘I have wanted to do that for a long, long time.’

Ozell watches her husband sip his drink and says, ‘Do you need something to eat before you drink any more coffee? You’re gonna be a hot mess.’

The man who has saved planets and raised up his own private army of superheroes on screen happily agrees to do as he is told.

They are clearly good for each other. She has given him the confidence to reveal himself publicly as a very funny man, which will be seen even more clearly this month with the start of his new American sitcom called Blunt Talk, produced by Seth MacFarlane, maker of Family Guy and Ted.

‘I have never done half hour comedy except as a guest, but I am the principal character. It’s about an Englishman who has a media show,’ he says.

Unfortunately, the character’s life is careering out of control.

‘It will be a Patrick Stewart that people have never really seen before,’ says his wife.

‘It’s incredible, but it’s going to rewrite the notion of him. He’s right on the edge all the time. It’s a Seth MacFarlane comedy.

'There’s a lot of illicit substances involved, women and fast cars,’ she says. ‘We are both birthing new projects and we can support each other.’

Stewart swallows a mouthful of the pastry she just urged him to eat, looks across at his talented young wife and says quietly: ‘She’s indispensable.’