Michael Fassbender: the man to take on Brando's mantle

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/may/20/observer-profile-michael-fassbender?newsfeed=true

Michael Fassbender: the man to take on Brando's mantle

The actor is noted for his huge range of work, from Shame to Jane Eyre and his new role as a robot in the prequel to Alien is likely to add to his plaudits

Elizabeth Day
The Observer, Saturday 19 May 2012


When Michael Fassbender was a teenager growing up in Killarney, Co Kerry, he wanted more than anything to be a heavy metal rock star. He grew his hair long, wore cut-off combat shorts and 10-hole Doc Martens and spent much of his spare time listening to thrash metal bands Metallica and Slayer at ear-splitting volume.

As it was, he performed a single concert in a pub with his friend Mike. It was the middle of the day and the regulars kept asking them to turn the volume down. "Nobody wants to hear Metallica at lunchtime," Fassbender recalled in a recent interview with GQ magazine.

But heavy metal's loss turned out to be acting's gain. At the age of 35, Fassbender has become part of the Hollywood A-list, an actor with a gift for teasing out the complex nuances of character. The sheer range of his work alone is impressive: in the last year, he has tackled gothic romance (Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre), comic-book heroism (Magneto in X-Men: First Class) and psychotherapy (Carl Jung in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method). Next month, Fassbender will star as an android in Prometheus, Ridley Scott's hotly awaited prequel to his seminal 1979 film, Alien. Although details of the plot are closely guarded, Fassbender has described his character as "incredibly human… he cries robot tears – and creeps everyone out".

Scott has called his new star: "One of the best three or four actors out there. He holds the screen." And according to the director Steve McQueen, who has worked with Fassbender several times: "There is no one like Michael out there right now. And there hasn't been, for me, since Marlon Brando. There's a fragility and a femininity to him, but also a masculinity that can translate. You're not in awe of him. You're part of him. He pulls you in. And that's what you want from an actor. You want people to look at him and see themselves."

On screen, Fassbender is able to convey both intensity and vulnerability in equal measure: his haunting portrayal of a sex addict in Shame won him critical plaudits and a clutch of awards, including the Volpi Cup for best actor at the 2011 Venice film festival. To the astonishment of many, he was overlooked for an Oscars nomination.

Off screen, he is renowned for his dedication. He will read a script up to 300 times before filming and has attributed this perfectionism to his Teutonic ancestry – his father, Josef, is from Germany. "If I came home with 85% in a test," Fassbender has said, "he'd always ask what happened to the other 15%."

When he played IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in McQueen's 2008 film, Hunger, Fassbender survived on 900 calories a day – a diet consisting mainly of nuts, berries and sardines – and lost 40lbs, taking him down to nine stone. Hunger went on to win the Caméra d'Or at Cannes. For Jane Eyre, Fassbender learned to ride, although filming was repeatedly delayed because every time the actor mounted his horse, the animal got an erection – much to the amusement of onlookers.

Vincent Cassel, who spoke to the Observer earlier this year and was Fassbender's co-star in A Dangerous Method, said simply that he was "an amazing actor… he and I really got along. It was one of the reasons I was attracted to doing the film – getting to work with him". His fellow actors use similar phrases to describe him. Although he brings a fierce, almost obsessive passion to each role, when Fassbender is off-duty, he is "very sane", "good company" and "a laugh"; one acquaintance recalls the hilarity of seeing Fassbender solo Cossack-dancing at a friend's wedding a few years ago.

David Cronenberg has described him as "so perky, it drives you crazy. One day [while filming A Dangerous Method], I found him out in the sun in his costume and make-up, with this big smile. I said, 'Michael, why are you smiling like that?' He said, 'I don't know... life.' I said, 'It's so irritating that you're happy all the time.'"

All of this points to the fact that fame has not gone to his head. Despite his Hollywood success, Fassbender still lives in the same modest flat in Hackney, east London, that he has owned since his late 20s, when he was struggling to get enough work to make ends meet. When a magazine journalist visited the flat recently, he noted it was covered with boxes and clothes and had bubbling paint on the ceiling where there had been serious water leakage.

"My mother wouldn't be happy," Fassbender admitted.

The first thing everyone notices is the name. The actor was born in Heidelberg in west Germany, and "Fassbender" is the German term for someone who repairs casks or barrels. Michael was almost born on April Fool's Day but, according to family lore, his father told his mother to hang on a bit longer and he appeared at half-past midnight the next day.

His mother, Adele, comes from County Antrim in Northern Ireland and when Fassbender was two, his parents moved to Killarney, where they ran the West End House restaurant, with his father working there as chef.

Fassbender and his older sister, Catherine (who is now a neuropsychologist), spent summer holidays in Germany and he speaks the language fluently.

In County Kerry, he went to the local Catholic school and was head altar boy at the age of 12 – an onerous responsibility that required him to attend all weddings and funerals and to look after the keys to the church. "A couple of times I slept in," he admitted in an interview with the Guardian. "And the whole congregation was waiting outside the church… but that was my first experience in a way of being on stage, before an audience, of sorts."

At the age of 16, his parents allowed him to move into rooms over the restaurant in town and to live a relatively independent life in return for his working shifts at the weekend. Someone who knows him from that period remembers the young Fassbender as "a very hard worker. He was a great character, great fun. He had great interaction with the customers – he made lots of tips.

"I wasn't surprised that he became an actor. It was all in him. He always had that ability, that roguishness.

"He's still great fun and very down to earth. We're all very proud of him here. When he comes home at Christmas, everyone respects him greatly but he just wants to be plain old Michael and we respect that too."

After failing to make it as a heavy metal star, Fassbender decided to become an actor. At first, his father tried to put him off the idea. "It sounds funny now but I tried to talk him out of it because it is such an unstable profession," Josef Fassbender told a fan site in 2009. "It depends so much on luck, who you meet, how you are received."

Nevertheless, his son went on to study at the Drama Centre in north London, dropping out before graduating after being cast in Steven Spielberg's epic Second World War television mini-series, Band of Brothers. Although it was meant to have been Fassbender's big break, he spent several months in Los Angeles being rejected for parts before eventually retreating to London and carving out a living on British television; through the years, he has appeared on Poirot, Holby City and Murphy's Law.

His breakthrough came when he turned 30 in 2007 and met the artist Steve McQueen, who was then planning to make his debut feature film. Although the pair's first encounter was inauspicious – McQueen thought Fassbender was cocky – they were persuaded to meet again by the casting director. This time, things went more smoothly. McQueen has since compared the experience to "falling in love. You want to keep it. And I think myself and Michael are very pleased that we've found each other in that way".

Fassbender's performance as Bobby Sands gave him his breakthrough into the big time. A year later, Quentin Tarantino cast him as the English officer Lt Archie Hicox in Inglourious Basterds alongside Brad Pitt and there was no turning back.

His appearance in Ridley Scott's science fiction bonanza is likely to earn him yet more plaudits and box-office success. In his personal life, too, he seems more settled of late, having recently confirmed he is dating his Shame co-star, Nicole Beharie. No wonder David Cronenberg remarked on Fassbender's remarkable perkiness – he's got every reason to smile.

Born 2 April 1977 in Heidelberg, then West Germany, to a German father and a Northern Irish mother. Her speaks German fluently.

When he was two his family moved to the Republic of Ireland to run a restaurant, and he went on to study drama in London.

Best of times His breakthrough performance in Hunger, about the IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, for which he underwent a crash diet, won him a British Independent Film Award.

Worst of times His outing in 2010 box office flop Jonah Hex. Fassbender admits he's not seen the film, which lost over $30m.

What he says "I don't know how to talk about what I do. People say things to me, like, 'I loved what you did with that role, how you did this and then this and then this!'

"And the only thing I can say is, 'Well, great.' But the fact of it is that I don't really know what I do.'"

What others say "Fassbender confirms his reputation as one of the most courageous and versatile actors to emerge in recent years."

Philip French, film critic on Shame