X-Men Movies: 7 Perfect Performances & 7 That Sucked

3. Sir Patrick Stewart - Professor Charles Xavier

When you close your eyes and try and conjure the image of Professor X, there's a good chance you think of Sir Patrick Stewart. He is, after all, one of the most famous bald actors of all time, but aesthetics are only half of the story here. Just like his good friend Sir Ian McKellen, Stewart had a background in classical theatre acting and he brought his Shakespearean experience and the discipline learned in playing that kind of character into his take on Xavier.

Most impressively, Stewart plays Xavier as three different characters over the course of his X-Men movie career. He's Charles Xavier, the father-figure, teacher and patron of the school named for him; he's also Professor X, powerful mutant and leader of X-Men and he's also simply Charles, an old, vulnerable man in Logan.

That final strand added a great deal to his arc, as it's easily his best performance in the franchise and what he achieves with James Mangold's devastating material is just haunting. Especially since he never quite surrenders the traces of the leader and father that made up the rest of his character.