Michael Fassbender, or an intellectual in Hollywood

French GQ

Michael Fassbender, or an intellectual in Hollywood

Ridley Scott, Cronenberg, Tarantino, Soderbergh: Hollywood cannot get enough of him. Capable of playing in blockbusters (300, X Men) as much as super arty films that are favoured in Venice and Cannes, Fassbender will be on show in the magnificent Shame. Or the haunting story of a sex addict. GQ met him.

You are so in demand right now that I read a Hollywood agent said he was willing to pay you to represent you. What do think about that?

Fassbender: Oh? That's nonsense. It is true that I'm receiving quite many offers right now, I feel very privileged. But you have to be careful in this business because nothing lasts. Right now I might be seen as flavour of the month, but we'll see next year. I just made six films in 20 months, which is enormous. I'll calm down and make myself forgotten, it will be good for everyone I think!

You are headlining Shame, which deals with sexual addiction and a prison of the nerves. The film is very raw. Another borderline role?

Fassbender: "My concern is to depict the ambivalence/complexities that we all have within us. I like the duality in characters, such as Magneto in X-Men, or my character in Fish Tank, who is very seductive, but at the same time is a downright bastard. I like to crack myself closer to what is humane, whether in a blockbuster film or in a more "intellectual" one. For Shame, I met people victims of sexual addiction. They told me of their loneliness, their suffering.

David Cronenberg has made you his Jung A Dangerous method, the history of the rivalry between the famous psychoanalyst and his mentor Freud. How is it to work with him?

He possesses an acute and rare intelligence. He is very precise. As he shoots the scenes, he edits it at the same time so it often requires reshooting just short periods of play. As a whole, I loved shooting with Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen (playing Freud) and above all Vincent Cassel, whom I've admire ever since his film La Haine.

You are seen in both arty and experimental films as much as big tentpoles such as 300, Centurion and Jonah Hex. Your biggest success is X Men: First Class, released this year ... thats quite a big gap right?

When I agree to make a studio film, I do it first because the character interests me. Magneto is a mutant, one excluded from the human community. He is Jewish and grew up in a concentration camp; the Nazis killed his parents and hope to use his super-power ... He feels excluded, a sentiment shared by many. A big reason I've also accepted was to collaborate with director Matthew Vaughn. And if I make films in Hollywood (he was almost cast in Green Lantern), it's also to help develop my own projects with my company, Peanut Productions. It makes it easier to convince investors ...

You've been compared to Brando, who are your role models?

I grew up with American movies of the 70s, so necessarily Pacino and De Niro. But equally Robert Duvall, Daniel Day-Lewis, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling. My dream is to shoot with the Coen brothers. The Big Lebowski is my favorite movie of all time. Nobody is quite as adept to mix as well tragedy and comedy.

In 2012 you will be in Prometheus, the new film by Ridley Scott, Alien kind of reboot, you can tell us more?

SPOILER I play David, an android, a robot. Again, a dual character, at the boundaries between human and machine ... END SPOILER

In Venice, you won the Best Actor's Award for Shame, and we saw you in flip-flops at the press conference, what's up with that look?

Apparently it made the rounds of blogs, everyone said it was rotten/disgusting! To be honest with you, I was hot, I drove a motorcycle for 6 weeks, I could no longer tolerate wearing boots ... so I nicked my father's flip flops ... Frankly I fashion ... is not something I spend my time on. I wear the exact same stuff on the red carpet as in life. In films I get to put on a disguise, I put the costume to embody someone else. If filmmakers want to work with me, I think it's due to my work, not because I wear fashionable shoes. Right? "