Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is a German-Irish actor. After studying at the Drama Centre London he became known for playing intense roles in film and television. He is the recipient of various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, four BAFTA 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.
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. He gained mainstream success for playing Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto in the X-Men series, and David⁸ and Walter One in Prometheus (2012), and its sequel, Alien: Covenant (2017).
For his portrayal of a sex addict in Steve McQueen's drama Shame (2011), he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and was nominated for Golden Globe and BAFTA Award. He received two Academy Award nominations: for Best Supporting Actor playing Edwin Epps in the historical drama 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Best Actor for his portrayal of the title role in biographical drama Steve Jobs (2015). He also starred in The Counselor (2013), Frank (2014), and Macbeth (2015). After a hiatus, he starred in the action thriller film The Killer (2023) and the spy film Black Bag (2025).
Fassbender began competing in auto racing in 2017 with the Ferrari Challenge. As of 2023, he races in the European Le Mans Series, driving for Proton Competition. He married Swedish actress Alicia Vikander in 2017.
Fassbender was born on 2 April 1977 in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany. His mother, Adele, is originally from Larne, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and his father, Josef Fassbender, is German. He has an elder sister named Catherine, a neuropsychologist at the MIND Institute in Sacramento, California, United States. According to lore on his mother's side of family, his mother is the great-grandniece of Michael Collins, an Irish leader during the War of Independence. At age two, Fassbender moved to Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, where his parents were to operate the West End House, a restaurant where his father also worked as a chef. His parents 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 his sister spent summer holidays in Germany. He attended Fossa National School near Killarney and St. Brendan's College in Killarney itself. Fassbender decided that he wanted to be an actor at age 17 when he was cast in a play. At age 19, he left home to study at the Drama Centre London. 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.
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.
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. Peter Bradshaw film critic 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 other film was the British drama Fish Tank directed by Andrea Arnold. Fassbender plays the boyfriend acting 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". Both films were critically acclaimed and Fassbender's work in them also well received.
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.
2011 was a breakout year for Fassbender. He portrayed Edward Rochester in the period film Jane Eyre, featuring Mia Wasikowska in the title role, with Cary Fukunaga directing. He next portrayed Magneto in the superhero blockbuster X-Men: First Class, the prequel to X-Men. Set in 1962, it focuses on the friendship between Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy) and Magneto and the origin of their groups, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants. The film was released on 3 June 2011 to general acclaim and financial success and promoted Fassbender to being more of a popular movie star. In 2011, Fassbender starred in A Dangerous Method by director David Cronenberg, playing Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. The film premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. He also starred in Shame, as a man in his thirties struggling with his sexual addiction. Shame reunited him with director Steve McQueen and premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, where Fassbender won a Volpi Cup Best Actor Award for his portrayal of Brandon. Fassbender was a serious contender for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, but he was not nominated, and according to various sources his full-frontal nudity and depiction of sexual encounters inspired voters "to fantasize, and not actually vote." Fassbender achieved critical acclaim for his portrayal in Shame and received nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award.
In 2012, he appeared as an MI6 agent in Haywire, an action-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh, and in Ridley Scott's science fiction film Prometheus. Reviews praised both the film's visual aesthetic design and the acting, most notably Fassbender's performance as the android David 8. Fassbender played the title role in Ridley Scott's The Counselor, a 2013 film based on the Cormac McCarthy script. In 2013, he starred in 12 Years a Slave, his third collaboration with Steve McQueen. Fassbender's portrayal of Edwin Epps earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Fassbender reprised the role of Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past (released 23 May 2014), the sequel to X-Men: First Class. Fassbender stars in the title role in Frank (released late summer 2014), a comedy loosely inspired by Frank Sidebottom, a comic persona created by English comedian Chris Sievey.
Fassbender co-starred in Slow West, a western starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Ben Mendelsohn, in 2015. He played Silas, an enigmatic traveller. Fassbender played late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs in the Danny Boyle-directed film Steve Jobs, which began filming in January 2015, in San Francisco, U.S., and premiered in September of that year. The film is an adaptation of Walter Isaacson's book Steve Jobs. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin. Fassbender became attached after Christian Bale dropped out of the project. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter praised Fassbender writing, "while [he] doesn't closely physically resemble the man, he fully delivers the essentials of how we have come to perceive the man". His performance saw him nominated for the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor.
Fassbender took on the Shakespearean role of Macbeth in a film directed by Justin Kurzel, where he teamed up with Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth and David Thewlis as King Duncan. Filming for the production began in January 2014 and the film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, Fassbender once again played Magneto in the film X-Men: Apocalypse. He next starred in The Light Between Oceans, based on the novel written by M. L. Stedman, and directed by Derek Cianfrance; the film began filming in New Zealand in late September 2014, and was released on 2 September 2016. Also in 2016, Fassbender starred in the thriller Trespass Against Us, with fellow Irishman Brendan Gleeson. His final film of the year was the adaptation of video game Assassin's Creed, which he co-produced through his DMC Film banner. It was released on 21 December 2016. Macbeth helmer Justin Kurzel directed, and co-star Marion Cotillard had a leading role, working with Fassbender again.
In May 2017, Fassbender reprised his role as the android David, and played another character, in the sequel to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant. In 2015, Fassbender was cast as Harry Hole (becoming the first actor ever to portray the character) in The Snowman, an adaptation of Jo Nesbø's novel, directed by Tomas Alfredson and co-starring Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Filming began in January 2016 and the film was released in October 2017. Fassbender reprised his role as Magneto in the 2019 film Dark Phoenix, which garnered unfavorable reviews and had a commercially unsuccessful theatrical run.
After a four-year absence during which Fassbender pursued auto racing, he returned to film acting in David Fincher's action thriller The Killer (2023) which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised Fassbender's casting writing, "Michael Fassbender is perfect in the main role of a yoga-loving assassin". The same year he starred in Next Goal Wins, directed by Taika Waititi, based upon the documentary of the same name. Fassbender also helped produce The Kitchen, a dystopian drama for Netflix, written by Daniel Kaluuya and Joe Murtagh.
Fassbender will next star in the action series The Agency for Paramount+. He will also star alongside Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell in Na Hong-jin's thriller Hope, and alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Hasselhoff in the comedy feature Kung Fury 2, a sequel to the 2015 short film.
Fassbender has expressed an interest in motorsport since his youth, stating in 2020, "Even before I started acting, I had a big dream to go racing." A fan of Formula One and Scuderia Ferrari, he was a member of the team's Corso Pilota training course in 2016.
He began racing in the Ferrari Challenge's Coppa Shell class in May 2017, finishing 15th in his debut at Mugello Circuit. He also raced in the Challenge's North American division, finishing sixth at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. In 2018, he ran the full Ferrari Challenge North America schedule, winning the season opener at Daytona International Speedway and finishing fifth in the standings.
Fassbender moved to Porsche in 2019, competing in Porsche Carrera Cup Germany with the German Porsche Racing Experience and being the subject of a YouTube series by Porsche, called Road to Le Mans. The following year, he joined Proton Competition for the full 2020 European Le Mans Series, sharing a 2017 Porsche 911 RSR with Richard Lietz and Felipe Fernández Laser. Later in the year Fassbender raced a guest car in the Porsche Supercup at Circuit de Catalunya and was involved in a startline crash putting him out of the race within seconds.
In 2021, Fassbender continued to race with Proton Competition in the European Le Mans Series. Fassbender and his co-drivers scored fourth-place finishes at the Red Bull Ring and at Spa-Francorchamps, before achieving his best-ever finish and his first podium at the last race at Portimão, finishing second behind the No. 80 Iron Lynx, eventual LMGTE champion. The team finished fourth in the LMGTE teams championship, with 61 points.
(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap)
Fassbender holds a German passport. He has said that he intended to get an Irish passport "for years and just never got around to it". He speaks German, though he stated that he needed to brush up on his spoken German before filming Inglourious Basterds (2009) because "it was a bit rusty". He has expressed interest in performing in a German-language film or play.
He grew up as a Catholic and was an altar boy, but now has described himself as a lapsed Catholic, though he says that he still goes to church to light candles. He is a supporter of Liverpool F.C. Fassbender is known for preferring to keep his personal life private. He moved into a property in the Hackney area of London in 1996, and resided there until he moved to Portugal in 2017.
Fassbender dated Sunawin Andrews. In 2010, She was accused him of two incidents of domestic abuse in 2009. News reports cited a court petition and a restraining order filed by Andrews. In the court filing, Andrews cited a hospital visit to treat, "a twisted left ankle, blown out left knee cap, and a bursted ovarian cyst" after the alleged incident with the car. He has not addressed the allegations publicly.
In June 2012, Fassbender told GQ magazine that he was dating American actress Nicole Beharie, with whom he had worked on the 2011 film Shame. In December 2014, he began dating Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, with whom he had worked on the film The Light Between Oceans (2016). They married in a private ceremony in Ibiza on 14 October 2017. They later moved to Portugal, where they reside in Lisbon. They have two sons.
Fassbender has been recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for two performances:
Fassbender has received a Critics' Choice Movie Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and the Venice International Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He has also received nominations for four BAFTA Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two European Film Awards.