Michael Fassbender praises 'beautiful, wonderful' actresses

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/film/article-23985000-michael-fassbender-praises-beautiful-wonderful-actresses.do

Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent
8 Sep 2011

He is Hollywood's hottest leading man, with two movies wowing audiences at the Venice Film Festival, and a third opening in Britain tomorrow.

In only three years, Michael Fassbender has gone from playing IRA prisoner Bobby Sands in Hunger to starring opposite the cream of the world's young actresses.

He plays alongside Carey Mulligan in Shame and Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method, both well received at Venice. And in Jane Eyre, which goes on general release tomorrow, he is hero Mr Rochester, with newcomer Mia Wasikowska in the title role.

The 34-year-old Hackney resident is modest about his own charms, but praised his colleagues, acknowledging they are "attractive to the eye".

Wasikowska, 21 - who starred in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland - was a "chameleon" in her capacity to arrive in a woolly hat and turn into a "goddess" for a publicity shoot, he said.

In A Dangerous Method, Knightley, 26, plays a patient who has sex with - and is spanked by - Fassbender as psychiatrist Carl Jung. She is "super-focused, with a great sense of humour," the actor said.

Mulligan, 26, who plays sister to Fassbender's sex-addict businessman in Shame, "gets down to doing the work," he added. "We have so many interesting actresses in the younger generation and they are starting to get more interesting roles. Keira is the centrepiece in A Dangerous Method. I'm working with wonderful actresses, beautiful actresses.

"But it's also the directors. I'm very lucky." Shame, directed by Steve McQueen, and David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method get their British premieres at next month's BFI London Film Festival.

Both have provoked comment for their sex scenes.

Fassbender said: "You can take somebody's head off with a cheesecutter in films but heaven forbid you show a penis on screen. Women have been exploited in cinema: the woman is always naked, the man conveniently has his pants on. This balances it up."

But the actor - born in Germany and raised in Ireland by his German father and Irish mother - said Jane Eyre remained faithful to its time, with a restrained approach to passion "where even touching a hand was much more of a breach of someone's space".