✔Passion ‘Fish’ Sexual tension fuels Fassbender’s latest role

http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/movies/general/view.bg?articleid=1228201&srvc=home&position=also

Stephen Schaefer By Stephen Schaefer
Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - Updated 7h ago

Boston Herald Entertainment Reporter

Michael Fassbender’s star is on the rise.

In “Fish Tank,” which snagged a prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Fassbender has a sexually charged turn as a charmer who might be too good to be true.

The British film is a gritty look at troubled, rebellious 15-year-old Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis). Fassbender plays nice guy Connor, who enters Mia’s life when he has a fling with her promiscuous single mother.

The character couldn’t be more different than his breakthrough role as Bobby Sands, the IRA martyr of 2008’s “Hunger,” or his part as an English film critic masquerading as a Nazi in last summer’s “Inglourious Basterds.”

The plot keywords in “Fish Tank” are “sexual tension.”

“I knew Connor had to be some kind of sexual force,” Fassbender, 32, said in an interview at Manhattan’s Soho Grand Hotel. “It basically unfolds with what sort of influence I have in this female dominated environment.”

Connor “had to be confident within his body and that was important for sure. Andrea (Arnold, the director) wanted this strong male presence coming into this tiny two-bedroom flat.”

Fassbender just wrapped up “Jonah Hex,” a comics-inspired western with Josh Brolin and Megan Fox.

“I’m a hired maniac. I play a twisted character called Burke who likes to stab prostitutes for some reason.”

Born in Heidelberg, Germany, to a German father and Irish mother, Fassbender was raised in Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland.

He decided to become an actor at age 17.

“My parents were, ‘Go and get a degree at university first.’ But I thought it would just be a waste of time and money.”

When he put on a stage version of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” at the local nightclub, “my parents knew I was serious and couldn’t convince me otherwise. Since then they’ve been great.”

(“Fish Tank” opens Friday.)