Abstract: A calender roll wherein a stationary shaft is spacedly surrounded by a cylindrical shell and carries a row of bearing elements which are movable by pairs of cylinder and piston units and have convex surfaces formed with pairs of fluid-filled pockets adjacent to the internal surface of the shell. Each pocket receives pressurized hydraulic fluid from the cylinder chamber of a different unit, and the cylinder and piston units for each bearing element are adjacent to each other, as considered in the circumferential direction of the shell. Those portions of the pockets which are remotest from a symmetry plane including the axis of the shell and extending between the pockets of each pair are bounded by arcuate lands. The lands which extend circumferentially of the shell are parallel to each other, and the pockets of each pair are separated from each other by a land which is halved by the symmetry plane.