Patrick Stewart returns as Professor Charles Xavier, a telepath and founder/leader of the X-Men, in X-Men: The Last Stand.

NEW YORK -- Capt. Picard is effectively dead. Charles Xavier? Well, let's call his status up in the air. Long live Shakespeare.

It's not that Patrick Stewart hasn't been gracious as an icon of enthusiastic sci-fi fans for two decades. It's just that it's seemed to him lately like that part of his life may finally be over.

And then it pops back up again, groundhog-like. As with the recent announcement that J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III) had signed on to develop an 11th Star Trek movie -- this one involving Kirk and Spock's days in Starfleet Academy.

"I hadn't heard anything other than that the studio (Paramount) had effectively killed Star Trek off five years ago after Nemesis," Stewart says, in an interview promoting X-Men: The Last Stand. "Then I got a call from my agent a few weeks ago saying 'You're not going to believe this, but ...'

"There's a new regime at Paramount that is very interested in reviving the franchise. Abrams is a fan and very enthusiastic.

"But there's been no mention that it would in any way involve Next Generation at all," he says, of the Star Trek series and movies that were a part of his life for 17 years.

Whew! There's a decision he didn't have to make -- for now. "I think frankly I'd be ambivalent," he says, "It's like a love affair you're just starting to get over."

As for The X-Men, the trilogy of movies in which he's played Charles Xavier, headmaster of a school of "Gifted Young People" with mutant super-powers, his connection may be fraying.

The movie -- with its mutant vs. mutant war over the invention of a "cure" for mutations -- is positioned as a finale, though spinoffs involving the Wolverine character (Hugh Jackman) and the villain Magneto (Ian McKellen) are being developed. Without going all "spoiler" on you, the fate of a handful of major characters is in doubt -- or as in doubt as a franchise can be that "kills" a character (Jean Gray) and then brings her back to life as a malevolent super-mutant.

Put it this way, three endings were filmed -- including one that runs after the closing credits and will undoubtedly be missed by some fans.

Stewart had seen the film at the same screening the Sun was at, and even he wasn't sure how it would end. "I sat with Jimmy Marsden (Cyclops) and when the credits began to roll, we got up to leave, and we were told 'Sit down, it ain't over.' What we saw was a very edited version of a scene I shot in Vancouver during first week of production."

So never say never. But meanwhile, Stewart says he's carrying on as if it is an unspoken truth -- and has returned after 30 years to Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company to rediscover his roots.

"I'm in the middle now of this huge complete-works season with the RSC, playing Antony in Antony & Cleopatra, and Prospero in The Tempest and I am so utterly home again. I am living proof that the adage about not going home again is untrue.

"I'm in Stratford on Avon, in the same dressing room I was in in 1967, the same cork tiles on the floor. One year before I went to Hollywood to start work on Star Trek, they completed this magnificent Swan Theatre where we're doing Antony. But the dressing rooms remain the same, except I have the dressing room to myself. I look out the window and the view has not changed. It's the Avon and the willows and the swans and the cricket being played."

There was no such exclusivity as far as makeup went on X-Men: The Last Stand. "I shared the general makeup trailer, which of course is fun. And with some of these actresses on this set, it's no hardship at 6 a.m. to see Halle Berry and Famke (Janssen) and Rebecca (Romijn)."

His time in the makeup chair also saw him further cement his friendship with Kelsey Grammer, who plays Beast. A fan of each other's shows, Grammer had a small role as a starship captain in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Stewart landed a role in a final season episode of Frasier.

"I was blessed in the final season to be invited to do that guest (Frasier) appearance, which was my first introduction to half hour sitcom work. I was such a fan of that show.

The day I walked into that apartment, I suddenly saw why people got all shaky and trembly when they walked onto the bridge of the Enterprise."