Because he just wasn't believable as the ultra-powerful headmaster of a school for children with special powers?
IIRC, he as already locked in as Professor X in the X-Men movies when they started looking for the HP cast.
Patrick Stewart with a long beard and hair what the christ.
This. Patrick Stewart should never be forced to hide his Bald of Awesome.
Even if he was available, he's based in the US now and the films were made in the UK. It may be coming home, but it would mean spending months of each year living in a hotel or in somebody's spare room. He does come back time to time to be in plays, so doing both jobs would result in him spending nearly a year living at someone else's place. Or he can take an X-Men job or do an American Dad voice over and go to his own home every night.
Actually, Stewart lives in Britain. If you listen to the American Dad DVD commentaries they say that Stewart records all his lines for the show in the UK (minus his first episode).
Too young-looking, too handsome, (perhaps) too well-known. Stewart is 10 years younger than Richard Harris & Michael Gambon, and looks younger still. Harris & Gambon both have (had) craggy, lived-in faces that gave the character the authentic been-a-wizard-forever look. Also, perhaps it didn't matter so much for a children's movie, but Stewart was already so strongly associated with the role of Picard, it might have been harder for audiences to buy him as Dumbledore. Harris & Gambon are more typical of character actors, in that they blend in to their roles.
Why is his the only name ever brought up when speculating about the casting of a bald character? There are other bald actors out there, and actors with hair can always shave (see Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor). Sometimes it makes sense (he was a near-perfect choice for Professor X), but often it just seems to be a case of "think of a convenient bald actor" (I'm not sure I can think of an actor who would be more miscast as Spider Jerusalem).
(OP again) The opposite seems to be true as well. I once got into hot water for suggesting him for the role of Lord Vetinari because "Vetinari's not bald." So the hell what?
Because Patrick Stewart has a righteously awesome skull shape that makes him look clever and commanding, and you can't always tell with haired actors whether that will be true with their hair off. But the bit about Vetinari is just silly. Wigs, people!
What's so unthinkable about a bald Vetinari? Kristin Kreuk isn't a redhead, but still made a perfectly good Lana Lang. If the performance is good enough, the appearance is secondary.
The character of Lord Vetinari has a very specific physical description that is part of the character. What about Alan Rickman for the role?
The only part of Vetinari's description that ever has any bearing on plot is the fact that he wears a skull cap. In fact, much of his appearance is based on that of Stephen Briggs, the first actor to play the part, and subsequent adaptations have deviated from it without hurting the character. (The script did that before the part was ever cast.)
I support the idea of Stewart playing Spider because he seems to actually love the series and character, (read the intro he wrote for one of the graphic novel volumes) and he's a good actor.
Couldn't Patrick Stewart have TRIED using a French accent for his French-born Star Trek character? I like TNG, but a French captain not having a French accent always bugged me. Unless...he was supposed have grown up in the Jersey Islands...
That's because he's speaking in French the entire series, and the Universal Translator turns it into vaguely british sounding English.
He said that he did try an accent initially, but that it came out sounding like Inspector Clouseau.
He plays a Frenchman in Steve Martin's LA Story, though his accent there is for laughs.
That said, it's not implausible that French-speakers can lose the accent upon speaking English. This troper once met a Frenchwoman who sounded almost British when she spoke English.
Also, it's a bit more likely that a Frenchman would learn English from a British person (since Britain is right next door). Or maybe Picard took a few semesters at Cambridge / Oxford before going to Starfleet Academy?
Maybe his mom's from Yorkshire and he spoke English to her growing up?
The man himself says that Picard had a very British nanny as a child, and got both the accent and the love of tea from her.
Does this explain why Star Trek envisions France itself as entirely populated by people with British accents, including a guy named "Louis" (pronounced like "Lewis" instead of "Louie")?
British nannies are very, very, very popular, and come pre-programmed into every personal holodeck.
Perhaps, in one of the interminable wars in the late-20th/21st/22nd century, England decided they'd better have it out with France again, and won.