Michael Fassbender Breaks Down His Career, from 'Inglourious Basterds' to 'X-Men'

When we got to Days of Future Past,

Ian McKellen was gonna be in the same movie as me.

So, I called him up and I was like,

How do you feel about doing my accent, Ian?

[Michael laughs]

No, we never had that conversation.

[light theatrical music]

Hi, I'm Michael Fassbender,

and this is the timeline of my career.

[light theatrical music]

[air swooshing]

[Lt. Spears] Christenson.

Lieutenant Spears.

I got the name right, didn't I?

Christenson? Yes, sir.

I first discovered acting when I was 17.

I just had figured out that I wasn't gonna be

a lead guitarist in a heavy metal band

'cause I just wasn't good enough.

And then, I went to Drama Centre London.

I dropped out after the Christmas show in my third year.

I've had recurring dreams,

where I've gone back to drama school to finish

the last six months,

which shows that there's some sort of

like psychological effect that that's had on me.

Oh Kiff, you're sitting in your bandit there?

[soldiers laughing]

Why don't you leave the sit to Luz?

When I got cast in Band of Brothers,

I was working nights in a warehouse.

It was more physical job than I had planned,

but I realized that I was just so tired during the day

'cause I was doing night shift.

So it was like start at like eight o'clock at night,

finished at seven in the morning,

and I just didn't have the energy to go to auditions.

I wasn't getting any anyway,

but I felt like I really didn't want to go to them

'cause I was just so tired.

And then I thought, Wait a sec,

something's gotta change here.

And then I got an audition for Pearl Harbor

and Band of Brothers.

I think within like two weeks,

I auditioned for both those jobs.

I did a good audition for Pearl Harbor,

but they cast Ben Affleck.

I don't know why.

[Michael laughs]

And they actually wrote back to me.

It was like a sweet response that, you know,

was good for my confidence.

And then, the other one was Band of Brothers.

The first day of Band of Brothers

I remember actually going to bootcamp.

We all got together in Hatfield

where they had shot Saving Private Ryan.

We all met up there and we got into all our Army gear,

and then we got on a bus and we headed off

to bootcamp for 10 days.

So, I've really clear memories of that first day.

[action music]

Our ancestors built this wall,

using ancient stones from the bosom of Greece herself.

And with a little Spartan help,

your Persian scouts supplied the mortar.

For 300, I think we trained for 10 weeks

before we stepped in front of a camera.

And because the film is so physical,

I think I have maybe four lines in the movie maybe.

So it's very much physically-based character performance.

And so to get in shape was key.

But yeah, I just enjoyed the fact that I was,

you know, getting in shape and getting paid.

I clear the reasons done.

I'm clear of all the repercussions,

but I will act

and I will not stand by and do nothing.

When I first met Steve McQueen,

I thought the meeting went really well.

And he hated me, [laughs]

I found out afterwards.

I remember I got the script for Hunger

and I was thinking, Oh you know,

my mom's from Northern Ireland.

I was very conscious about doing something

that would show respect to everybody that comes from there.

And so, I went in to meet Steve

and I was just immediately taken by him.

He was just an original mind and an original person.

I knew I was gonna learn a lot working with him.

And I left the meeting and I was thinking, Great.

And he was like, I don't wanna see that guy again.

And it was Gary Davy, the casting director, was like,

No, I really think this is the guy.

You know, call him back to do an audition at least.

And so he called me back, I did the audition,

and that was it.

From that day on we became fast friends and really close.

It's a subtextual film criticism study of the work

of German director G. W. Pabst.

What should we drink to, sir?

Well, um,

down with Hitler.

All the way down, sir.

Yes. [glasses click]

I remember when I first saw Pulp Fiction,

I was just like, What is this?

It was so new.

And he was such an influence on me starting out as an actor.

Reservoir Dogs was huge for me.

So, to be on set working with him was,

for me it was a quite a surreal experience.

I definitely pinching myself a lot on set.

And you know, he loves film.

He's just an encyclopedia

when it comes to anything that's been on screen.

And he is so passionate

and every character that he's written,

he knows and loves.

So you better know [chuckles]

and put in, you know, the attention

and the detail to everything

'cause he has done it.

You know, even that thing of like three, you know.

That detail for me, I was like, Wow, okay.

Yeah, I realized my dad's German

so he always counts first with the thumb.

And that's such a German thing.

And I was like, that detail is classic Quentin Tarantino,

to pick up in that detail and to put it in his film

and to make it such a monumental moment

in that scene in the tavern.

Incredible. It was a joy working with him.

[intense music]

[speaker speaking in foreign language]

Let's just say I'm Frankenstein's monster.

What really drew me to that story,

First Class, and the character

was this idea of an outsider,

and what it feels like to be an outsider

and to feel like you don't belong.

And that for me was an interesting core

to work from for the character

and to find the justifications in what his actions were,

which again were pretty monumental.

The lengths that he was willing to go to

and what the motivation of that was,

and essentially the core of it is just

Magneto just needs a hug.

If you're in there,

I'd like you to know that I agree with every word you said.

We are the future.

When we did X-Men: First Class,

I talked to Matthew Vaughn about the accent.

You know, should I go in the direction of McKellen?

And Matthew was like, No.

He's like, Your accent's so weird and funny.

It was like, I like it.

You know, stick to your accent.

So I was like, Okay.

And then when we got to Days of Future Past,

Ian McKellen was gonna be in the same movie as me.

So I called him up and I was like,

How do you feel about doing my accent, Ian?

[Michael laughs]

No, we never had that conversation, obviously.

So, I then was like, okay well I better start

trying to speak a little bit more like Ian McKellen

'cause we're both gonna be in the film together

and he's playing the older version of Magneto.

So I actually changed it in Days of Future Past

because we were both in the same film.

Are you still Charles's Raven,

or are you Mystique?

You wouldn't notice it if you watched it.

That just [laughs],

because it was all in my head.

This isn't working out, obviously.

You need to find somewhere else to live.

I don't have anywhere else to go.

It's a very particular addiction.

Let's say you're addicted to alcohol.

It's an external thing that you're bringing in.

And so, it's something that you can exist without, you know.

Whereas when it's sex or food,

those sort of relationships I think,

it's super difficult

because these are things that are innately within us.

You know, to reproduce.

You have somebody who's longing for that intimacy,

but can't deal with it.

You know, anything intimate is just like a rash.

But then at the same time,

doing very intimate acts with somebody,

having that compulsion to do it.

Super complicated.

I mean, I met somebody who Brandon was based on,

and just sitting down talking with him

was a big help and an insight into that sort of head space.

But for sure, for me, that was definitely

the darkest of places for me as a character.

[rain pouring]

Steve has got like a lot of special qualities,

but also, I found he was always very accessible

with his intelligence.

Anytime he was trying to explain something,

it was in a very practical way.

And it was also coming from a personal place

a lot of the times.

He would reveal something about himself.

The main key thing, and I think I'll speak for all actors

that have worked with Steve,

I think I can do that confident, is trust.

There's such a feeling of trust on set,

and trust is the key thing.

You're opening yourself, you're naked in a lot of respects,

and showing real sort of sides

of yourself and vulnerabilities.

You've gotta go to those places that are not easy to go to.

And he's also somebody that instills

a lot of confidence in your instinct.

You know, trust your instinct.

Don't second guess yourself.

Again, because you're in the hands of somebody

who is so brilliant,

you can allow yourself to go to those places

because you know that he's going to take care of you.

[David speaking in foreign language]

[alien growls]

[light music]

When I first came on set for Prometheus,

Ridley was like, Oh, watch the film 'The Servant'

and Dirk Bogarde's character.

I was like, Oh great.

I love that when there's like a film to take

some inspiration from.

And then when I arrived on set, he was like,

He's like a butler, you know.

He's like checks the dust.

And that alone, I was like, I was off to the races.

I knew exactly there and where I was going.

And also, the fact that this character

is obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia in this film.

I was like, Wow, that's such an interesting little quirk.

[William] Well, what's the trick then?

The trick, William Potter,

is not minding that it hurts.

The trick, William Potter,

is not minding that it hurts.

I think the interesting thing for David

watching Lawrence of Arabia

is it's sort of this idea of God and creation.

And I think it's a great character

in terms of what he's achieved, what he can achieve,

you know, defying all the odds.

But there's tragedy within the character

and I think he finds that maybe curious, you know,

studying the human condition.

And the idea of an AI becoming obsessed with something

I think is kind of scary in itself,

whatever it is.

You know, why has he sort of honed in

on this particular thing?

There's something quite unsettling about that or unbalanced.

[upbeat fiddle music]

Come on, where's your merriment?

Move your feet!

I think, you know, dealing with a character like Epps

who does such horrendous things.

There was a couple of things with the character.

First of all, he's not a very intelligent man

and he's got a lot of power,

and that's so scary.

But then, the core of the relationship,

which really is Patsey.

He's in love with Patsey,

but there's no way that he can process that.

He doesn't have the tools to do at the time

that it is his position,

his emotional and limited intelligence.

The results are horrific.

And you know, when Steve was talking about

all the characters in 12 Years of Slave,

there was never an approach to Epps in terms of a judgment.

And I think that's super important

when you're dealing with the characters

that do really despicable things.

It's just trying to sort of understand them

and facilitate them,

and facilitate what they're supposed to do in the story

and not to let judgment get in the way of that.

Because he's got such an important part

of all of the character's stories in there.

You know, Patsey and Solomon.

It's such an important part

that you have to do justice to it.

And by doing justice to it, you can't judge it.

[light acoustic music]

♪ Lone standing tuft ♪

♪ Defies the foot ♪

Super liberating to work with masks.

And you know, it's something that if I'm doing workshops

with students, or you know,

Commedia dell' Arte is a great tool to sort of let go

and get rid of inhibitions.

Putting on a mask is very powerful like that,

and certainly that was the case with Frank.

I knew that it was again

physically trying to represent

what was happening inside the head. [laughs]

That was a lot of fun.

And also, the lack of movement says a lot

because you now allow the audience to do some work.

So the audience are coming there,

they're watching this character,

and they're projecting what they are seeing

or thinking or feeling onto that character.

So it's really interesting like that with masks.

You don't necessarily have to do a lot.

Actually by being still, a lot can be communicated.

[Steve] A long time ago you asked me a favor

before our product launch and I said no.

You wanted me to acknowledge- Hang on.

If you're about to say you were wrong,

I wanna prepare this journalist.

I was 100% right,

and you were spectacularly wrong.

I just remember when I first read the script,

I was like, this is incredible.

It's the best thing I've ever read.

He's such a brilliant writer

that it's very hard to edit what he writes

because everything's interlinked.

It's like a brick.

You pull it out of the wall,

the whole wall comes down,

so you can't edit it.

It's there, it's gotta stay there.

I don't have any trouble remembering that, John,

because of it being the worst night of my life.

And I forced the vote because I believed I was right.

I still believe I'm right

and I'm right!

There's a cadence to how the dialogue has to be spoken.

And if you don't jump on board with that cadence,

it won't make sense.

Like Shakespeare, there's a rhythm that he has written it to

and you have to obey that.

And if you fall off that rhythm,

you kinda get kicked off and you gotta start again.

There's no room for improvisation.

There's no need to.

Whatever's on the page is excellent.

Finding the rhythm of how it's written

is key to how you deliver, you know,

and how you discover the character through it.

[The Killer] My camo is based in a German tourist I saw

in London a while back.

[panel chimes]

No one really wants to interact with a German tourist.

Parisians avoid them like the rest of the world

avoid street mimes.

It's a very precise way of working.

David Fincher is obviously a master of filmmaking

and it's somebody that has done it all.

You know, from working in a cinema

when it was still like changing film reels

to working in the camera department,

obviously the director he is today.

It's about everything that's in the frame.

And so, every day is just about fractional stuff.

It's everything is super precise.

It was an amazing experience, I have to say,

because he has such high standards again.

And he holds himself accountable to those standards

more than anybody else.

Object is turning speed.

Hustle, hustle, hustle, bustle.

You know what?

Forget about it.

Forget about it.

Hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop.

Head up, head up, head up.

Let's go, let's go.

[Ace] Get your feet up!

Get of the way here.

[Ace] Get your feet up!

Improvisation is a very specific thing,

'cause extensively it's like 90% of the movie

is improvisation in Next Goal Wins.

And you know, you're all doing it collectively.

You need a good collection of people to do that.

And of course, a great director to sort of

be pulling all the strings.

Make sure that this ship has a rudder

and it's going in a certain direction.

You've gotta be brave.

You've gotta like throw yourself into the scene.

You've gotta be prepared to fall flat in your face

and make a fool yourself and do it many times.

And through that, you discover things in the scene,

but really you're not,

you discover it afterwards because to really do it well,

you've really gotta be present.

You gotta listen.

You know, that's the great thing about improvisation.

You really do have to listen

'cause the other person's throwing something at you

and you've gotta be awake and alive.

[door slides]

Your castle awaits.

[door jams]

Your landlord is Tihoni.

He lives in the house next door

and he's available 7/24 to address your every need.

7/24?

Seven days out of every 24.

[curtain rod clanks]

Taika is continually throwing stuff at you.

So he's like, Say this,

and then he'll say like 20 lines.

And you're like, Okay, well I can't remember all of that.

So I'll try and take the essence of it.

But that's how we did it.

You know, that's how we shot the whole thing.

There's a lot of stuff getting thrown in,

and it's kind of like a blender of ideas.

And then you just gotta get a flavor of it,

a color of it, and then do your own thing with it.

And that's kind of how the whole thing was formed.

[light music]

I feel like I've learned a lot and I continue to learn.

Every time I go back on a film set,

I have the same doubts and fears.

It's when I got back and said, I was like,

This is my job, this is what I do.

And then you know, the same feelings of responsibility,

and like I say, doubt and passion.

Those things remain the same.

[light piano music]