Patrick Stewart keeps James McAvoy's hair in his safe

Patrick Stewart keeps the hair James McAvoy shaved off to play Professor X locked up in his safe.

The veteran actor plays the X-Men leader and telepathic mutant, also known as Charles Xavier, in the original X-Men trilogy, while the Atonement star portrays him in the prequels, and in upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse, James finally ends up with the signature bald style Patrick's Professor sported.

Director Bryan Singer called up Patrick on cell phone app FaceTime in May, 2015 so he could watch James shave his head and the video footage was released this week (beg08May16), showing Patrick advising them to send him some of the locks.

James has now let slip that Patrick treats his hair like a prized keepsake, telling U.K. chat show host Graham Norton, “When we finally shaved it off we decided to Facetime Patrick Stewart so he could pass on the baldy baton. We thought it was funny when he asked if he could have some of the hair, but it turns out the director bagged it up for him and he now has all my hair at home in a safe, which is kind of creepy.”

In the shaving video, Patrick jokes, "Why don't you save lots of it and send it to me - I can make some use of it," before telling James he looks terrific.

The Scottish actor replies, "I'm finally understanding what it's like to be you," and Patrick quipped, "The difference is that I looked like that when I was 19."

James was looking forward to going bald so much that he shaved his head before production started, when he was meant to have a full head of hair.

He told Graham, “I shaved it months before to see what it would look like and turned up on the shoot with about two month’s growth and they were like, ‘What have you done?’ and I had to have the first of 17-hour hair extensions sessions!"

X-Men: Apocalypse is released in the U.K. on 18 May (16) and U.S. on 27 May (16).