Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender (German pronunciation: [ˈmɪçaʔeːl ˈfasbɛndɐ]; born 2 April 1977) is a German-Irish actor. His accolades include a win for one Volpi Cup and nominations for two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, he was listed at number nine on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

After studying at the Drama Centre London, Fassbender made his feature film debut in 300 (2006). Early roles include in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and the Sky One fantasy drama Hex (2004–2005). He first came to prominence playing Bobby Sands in the drama Hunger (2008). Subsequent roles include the 2009 films Fish Tank and Inglourious Basterds, and the 2011 films Jane Eyre and A Dangerous Method, and lead roles in the films The Counselor (2013), Frank (2014), and Macbeth (2015). He gained mainstream success for playing Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto in the X-Men film series (2011–2019), and David 8/Walter One in two installments of the Alien film series (2012–2017).

For his portrayal of a sex addict in Steve McQueen's drama Shame (2011), he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. His portrayals of Edwin Epps in the historical drama 12 Years a Slave (2013) and title role in biographical drama Steve Jobs (2015), respectively, earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor. He took a four-year acting hiatus after 2019, during which he began competing in auto racing.

After driving for Proton Competition in the European Le Mans Series in 2023, Fassbender made a return to acting with the thrillers The Killer (2023) and Black Bag (2025), as well as starring in the spy series The Agency: Central Intelligence (2024). Married to Swedish actress Alicia Vikander since 2017, he has two sons.

Early life

Fassbender was born on 2 April 1977 in the city of Heidelberg in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The state was part of West Germany at the time. His mother, Adele, is originally from Larne, a town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and his father, Josef Fassbender, is German. Fassbender has an elder sister named Catherine, a neuropsychologist at the MIND Institute in Sacramento, California, United States. According to lore on her side of family, Adele is the great-grandniece of Michael Collins, an Irish leader during the War of Independence.

When Fassbender was two years old, the family moved to Killarney, a town in County Kerry, Ireland, where Josef and Adele were to operate a restaurant named the West End House. Josef also worked as a chef in the restaurant. The couple chose Killarney because they wanted their children to grow up in the countryside, in contrast to the industrial backdrop of their previous German residence.

Fassbender, who was raised Catholic, served as an altar boy at the church his family attended. He and Catherine spent summer holidays in Germany. He attended Fossa National School in the village and parish of Fossa and St. Brendan's College in Killarney. Fassbender decided to become an actor at the age of 17 when he was cast in a play. He left home to study at the Drama Centre London at the age of 19. In 1999, Fassbender dropped out of the Drama Centre and toured with the Oxford Stage Company to perform the play Three Sisters. Before finding steady work as an actor, he worked as a bartender, postman, manual labourer, market researcher for Royal Mail and Dell employee.

Acting career

2001–2005: Television work

Fassbender's first screen role was that of Pat Christenson in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's award-winning television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). He played the character of Azazeal in both series of Hex on Sky One and starred as the main character in the music video for the song "Blind Pilots" by the British band The Cooper Temple Clause. In the video, he plays the part of a man out with friends on a stag night who slowly transforms into a goat due to wearing a cowbell necklace. Fassbender played Jonathan Harker in a ten-part radio serialisation of Dracula produced by BBC Northern Ireland and broadcast in the Book at Bedtime series between 24 November and 5 December 2003. He was also seen in early 2004 in a Guinness television commercial, The Quarrel, playing a man who swims across the ocean from Ireland to apologise personally to his brother in New York; this commercial won a gold medal at the 2005 FAB Awards.

On the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Fassbender played Michael Collins, his great-great-granduncle, in Allegiance, a play by Mary Kenny based on the meeting between Collins and Winston Churchill. In addition, Fassbender produced, directed, and starred in a stage version of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, along with his production company. He appeared in Angel (UK title: The Real Life of Angel Deverell), about the rise and fall of an eccentric young British writer (played by Romola Garai) in the early 20th century. Fassbender plays her love interest, an average painter named Esmé. The drama—the first English-language effort by French director François Ozon and based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor—premiered on 17 February 2007 at the Berlin International Film Festival and on 14 March 2007 in Paris. He then made a brief appearance in Dean Cavanagh and Irvine Welsh's Wedding Belles as Barney, speaking with a Scottish accent.

2006–2010: Early film roles

In 2006, Fassbender played Stelios, a young Spartan warrior, in 300, a fantasy action film directed by Zack Snyder. The film was a commercial success. In preparation for his role as Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoner Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's historical drama film Hunger (2008), Fassbender adopted a diet that restricted him to 600 calories a day, weighing 125 pounds (57 kg) as Sands. Regarded as his breakthrough, his performance earned him the British Independent Film Award. Film critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "As Sands, Fassbender gives another ferociously convincing performance and his emaciated appearance is, finally, almost unwatchable."

One year after his success at the Cannes Film Festival with Hunger, he appeared in two films. The first was Quentin Tarantino's revisionist World War II comedy-drama Inglourious Basterds, in which he played the British officer Lieutenant Archie Hicox. Fassbender acted opposite Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, and Christoph Waltz. Eric Kohn of IndieWire praised the film and its ensemble declaring, "Hell, it's one of the best films of the century. The cast is superb". The second film was the British drama Fish Tank directed by Andrea Arnold. Fassbender plays the boyfriend opposite Kierston Wareing as the single mother with two children. Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter praised their chemistry and roles writing, "Fassbender and Wareing give honest and open performances as the conflicted adults". According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, both films were mostly well-received by critics.

In 2010, Fassbender appeared as Burke in Jonah Hex, a Western film. In an interview at San Diego Comic-Con, a comic book convention, Fassbender commented of the role: "I kind of developed this character and really pushed it – I'll see how far I pushed it ... I had this idea about the character, he's kind of psychotic, he gets his kicks in perverted ways. I didn't want to make it very obvious or like something you've seen before." Hex received predominantly negative reviews. Responding to criticism of Jonah Hex in 2011, Fassbender commented: "Pretty awful, was it? I haven't seen it myself." He portrayed Quintus Dias in Neil Marshall's bloody Roman war-thriller-drama film Centurion, and was cast as Richard Wirth in the Joel Schumacher film Blood Creek alongside Dominic Purcell. The story centres on a West Virginia man who comes to terms with his moral qualms and helps his brother wipe out a family that had been protecting a Nazi occultist and who had kept his brother captive for him to feed off for years.