Michael Fassbender

Actor

• Born: April 2, 1977
• Place of Birth: Heidelberg, Germany

Contribution: Michael Fassbender is a German and Irish actor known for playing the complex supervillain Magneto in X-Men: First Class (2011) and its sequels, as well as notable roles in films such as Shame (2011), Prometheus (2012) and its sequel Alien: Covenant (2017), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Steve Jobs (2015).

Background

Michael Fassbender was born on April 2, 1977, in Heidelberg, Germany. His mother, Adele, was Irish, and his father, a professional chef named Josef, was German. He grew up with an older sister, Catherine. When he was a toddler, Fassbender's family moved to Killarney, Ireland, where his parents established a restaurant called the West End House.

Fassbender attended Fossa National School and St. Brendan's College. He began to develop an interest in acting as a teenager, when he took a drama class with renowned acting teacher Donie Courtney. He later took classes in stage and screen acting at the Drama Centre London.

Career

Fassbender's early career was marked by disappointment, as he was largely unable to find substantial work. In 2001, he appeared in the critically acclaimed television miniseries Band of Brothers, but his role was minor and did not lead to further opportunities. Fassbender worked as a bartender in London to support himself during this period. He also made a number of appearances in various British miniseries and television movies, including a role as the infamous seventeenth-century traitor Guy Fawkes in 2004's Gunpowder, Treason & Plot.

In 2006, Fassbender had a relatively minor role in the blockbuster fantasy action film 300, directed by Zack Snyder. The following year, he appeared in a costarring role in the film Angel (2007). Fassbender later told the press that he was particularly thankful to Angel's director, François Ozon, who was the first to cast him in a major role.

Not long after, director Steve McQueen cast Fassbender as the lead in Hunger (2008), a biographical film about Irish republican Bobby Sands, who led inmates of a Northern Irish prison in a hunger strike in 1981. Fassbender lost a significant amount of weight in order to portray Sands during the last days of his life. The film won prizes at various international film festivals and marked the turning point in Fassbender's career, giving him his first chance to prove that he could be a leading actor in a major film. The following year, he captured the attention of a wider audience in his role as a British officer in director Quentin Tarantino's World War II film Inglourious Basterds.

As Fassbender became increasingly well known, he was offered a number of major roles in high-profile films. He took advantage of these opportunities, completing six films in a twenty-month period. Fassbender received critical praise for his portrayal of psychoanalyst Carl Jung in the 2011 David Cronenberg drama A Dangerous Method, also starring Keira Knightley as Jung's patient and lover and Viggo Mortensen as Jung's mentor, Sigmund Freud. Also in 2011, Fassbender played Edward Rochester in a film adaptation of the nineteenth-century novel Jane Eyre and appeared in the action film Haywire alongside former mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano. Fassbender performed his own stunts in the latter film and said in interviews that he enjoyed performing in an action-oriented role.

Fassbender received significant critical and public attention for his role in the 2011 film Shame, directed by McQueen, which focuses on a man's struggles with sex addiction. Fassbender noted that he worked hard to express the disgust and self-loathing felt by his character. Although much of the media coverage of the film focused on Fassbender's nudity in several scenes, critics praised his nuanced performance and the film as a whole. Fassbender won numerous awards for his performance, including accolades from the London Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Film Award for best leading actor.

Fassbender went on to play the young version of comic-book villain Magneto in 2011's X-Men: First Class, a prequel to the earlier X-Men films. He won critical attention for the vulnerability and complexity he brought to the character, who had previously been played by renowned actor Ian McKellen. The following year, Fassbender appeared in the science-fiction film Prometheus, directed by Ridley Scott. Though the film received mixed reviews, Fassbender's performance as the android David was widely praised.

In 2013, Fassbender collaborated with McQueen again, appearing as the slaveholder Edwin Epps in the acclaimed 12 Years a Slave, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. That same year he was featured in another film by Scott as well, The Counselor, which was written by noted author Cormac McCarthy. A more quirky role was the title character in Frank (2014), an enigmatic singer-songwriter who always wears a giant papier-mâché head. In 2014, Fassbender also reprised the role of Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past. He took on two notable dramatic parts in 2015, playing the main role in an adaptation of Macbeth directed by Justin Kurzel and playing the cofounder of the technology company Apple in Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs. The latter part brought him multiple awards nominations, including for best actor at the Oscars, the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), and the Golden Globe Awards.

Fassbender was very active in 2016, but many of his projects failed to impress critics even when his individual performances were praised. He once again featured as Magneto, in X-Men Apocalypse, and starred in another big-budget action film, Kurzel's video game adaptation Assassin's Creed. However, both received largely negative reviews and underperformed at the box office. Meanwhile, he also had lead roles in the romantic drama The Light Between Oceans and the crime drama Trespass Against Us, both of which drew mixed reviews. Fassbender next appeared in director Terrence Malick's ensemble film Song to Song (2017), which also polarized critics. His string of underwhelming parts continued with the widely panned crime film The Snowman (2017), an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø, in which he played detective Harry Hole.

Sequels continued to make up a significant portion of Fassbender's filmography. In 2017, he reprised his role as David in the Prometheus follow-up Alien: Covenant, playing another android. His acting was noted by many critics as one of the film's strongest points. In 2019, Fassbender returned to the part of Magneto for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, earning some praise for his performance amid overall negative reviews. He had roles in two 2023 films, The Killer and Next Goal Wins. He also appeared in the 2024 biopic Kneecap. He landed the starring role in the series The Agency, George Clooney's remake of a French political drama, The Bureau, in 2024. Fassbender, Clooney, and Grant Heslov were executive producers through their Smokehouse Pictures. Fassbender's character is a CIA agent recalled from his undercover life.

Impact

Although Fassbender initially struggled to find work as an actor, he eventually impressed both audiences and critics with his ability to fill a wide variety of supporting and leading roles. Deeply dedicated to his performances, he at times altered his appearance drastically, performed dangerous stunts, and appeared in provocative scenes—all for the sake of his craft. He gained recognition for playing characters whose levels of nuance and three-dimensionality exceed the Hollywood standard, in both acclaimed films and less successful works.

Personal Life

Fassbender married The Light Between Oceans costar Alicia Vikander in 2017. They have two children.

Bibliography

Abeel, Erica. "Interview with Michael Fassbender, Thinking Man's Star." Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 23 Nov. 2011. Web. 15 July 2013. Adams, Sam. "Interview: Michael Fassbender." AV Club. Onion, 8 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 July 2013.

Brockes, Emma. "What's a Nice Boy Like Michael Fassbender Doing in a Film Like Shame?" Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 6 Jan. 2012. Web. 15 July 2013.

Cole, Olivia. "Michael Fassbender Blows Up!" British GQ. Condé Nast UK, 1 Feb. 2012. Web. 15 July 2013.

Heath, Chris. "Fast Bender." GQ. Condé Nast, June 2012. Web. 15 July 2013.

"Michael Fassbender." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm1055413/?ref‗=fn‗al‗nm‗1. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

White, Peter. "Michael Fassbender to Star in Paramount+'s Remake of 'The Bureau.'" Deadline, 24 June 2024, deadline.com/2024/06/michael-fassbender-paramount-remake-the-bureau-1235981733/. Accessed 25 Sept. 2024.

Wissot, Lauren. "Interview: Michael Fassbender." Slant. Slant Magazine, 13 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 July 2013.