Michael Fassbender talks about his Oscar-tipped performance in Shame

By Mark Kebble on January 24th 2012

Michael Fassbender is arguably the man of the moment. One of the most in-demand actors working right now, the 34-year-old Irish-German actor has a host of projects on the way, beginning with Shame. Reuniting him with Steve McQueen, the director who gave him his breakthrough on Hunger, the biopic of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, Shame is a searing study of sex addiction that has already seen Fassbender claim Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival in September 2011. In the film, he plays Brandon, a New York office worker with an uncontrollable libido whose life is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan).

Q: Did it take much to decide to work with Steve McQueen again?

A: It wasn’t really a problem. Steve changed my life with Hunger, so I didn’t even need to read a script. It was just ‘When and where?’

Q: Was Shame a very different experience reuniting with him?

A: Yes and no. We’ve got such a great shorthand now. Steve’s the best. I trust him implicitly. We just picked up where we left off, which was amazing. What was really impressive about Steve is that I’d seen the passion that people worked with on Hunger, and I thought, ‘We’re in Belfast, this is a story that’s close to people’, and I was curious to see what he’d be able to do in New York. But he got exactly the same off the crew.  I remember the grip, Joe, he’s been doing it for 35 years – he’s a real pro – and he’s getting paid bottom end money. But he said to me, ‘I don’t want to let Steve down.’ He manages to get that passion in everyone, which is amazing to see. But it was more difficult than Hunger.

Q: Really? Given the physical extremes you went through…

A: It was. Mentally, it was a lot more distressing. The thing with Hunger, yes I had to lose the weight, but I had a timetable for ten weeks that I just had to stick to. So it’s like ‘OK, I have to eat 600 calories today’ and you just go through it. It was like ticking the boxes. This was pretty disturbing, the idea of what this character is about and the idea of relationships and us dealing with each other, and intimacy, and how for some people this is a difficult thing.

Q: What did Shame teach you about loneliness? Were you shocked by what you found?

A: Yeah, I suppose, like everybody else, it’s kind of a grey area, this idea of sexual addiction. I suppose because all of us were introduced to it probably through celebrity stories. There’s a certain public perception, that it’s a self-indulgence within that world. So what was interesting to discover was how many people claimed to suffer from it, and how it wasn’t an official mental illness. And then it’s just the various factors. What was very important to Brandon’s character, and what Abi [Morgan, screenwriter] and Steve had really put at the core of his character was this problem of dealing with intimacy and emotional content with any sort of relationship. So trying to find that was the hard part because everything stemmed from that. So I am very grateful, and I was very lucky at the time to meet somebody who was suffering from exactly that. I think it’s very difficult when you talk to somebody like that. You’re trying to essentially extract information out of them, so by asking them direct questions, people then tend to be on guard a little bit more. So I just asked them to tell me stories and from those stories I could get an idea where certain motivations were born within a personality like that, and how somebody suffering from this condition deals with it in the situation. Or how it manifests itself physically – even an embrace, where you might squirm your way out of it. So that helped me get a physical life for that inner life, if you like. So it really helped meeting somebody. Then I just worked a lot with the script.

Q: Where’s the hope in the film? Is there any?

A: For me, there’s always hope. I think there’s hope because he’s trying to deal with it. That’s enough hope for me. If there’s no hope, for me personally, what’s the fucking point? We might as well all give up. So that’s the hope for me. He’s struggling with it, he’s trying. Whether he goes with her or he doesn’t, for me I don’t know, but there’s the hope.

Q: Were there any sequences you were reluctant to do?

A: No, my imagination was much more devious than what was in the script!

Q: But did you not feel embarrassed doing some of the scenes?

A: Oh, of course. Unless you have exhibitionist tendencies, which is cool…but I don’t. I don’t feel comfortable parading around naked in what is essentially – at the beginning – a room full of strangers. But it just had to get done. It was an essential part of getting inside the psyche. There are various stages that you see exactly what’s going on in his head, and that’s my job. I’ve got to facilitate these things, and forget about Michael Fassbender or whatever that image is. I’m there to tell stories and facilitate my part in the story. So you just roll up your sleeves – though I didn’t have any on! – and go for it.

Q: Acting can be a lonely profession. Was this a way of relating to the character?

A: I didn’t think of it like that. I just dived into the script, and tried to find the person in the script. You ask a lot of questions. It’s a very personal way that I go about it, and it’s all kind of boring, the preparation and all that. But it’s just about relating the character back to yourself, asking honest questions to yourself, and then just finding a list of characteristics and then ticking the boxes which you’ve got already, and then working on the other ones. I don’t know where the relationship starts or ends but it’s just about being honest with yourself.

Q: How did you deal with the film’s long takes?

A: Really, I keep going until I hear ‘cut’. I don’t want to be flippant about it. Literally, I work on the script an awful lot. That’s where I get most of my inspiration for the character, and everything else is just through a process of spending a lot of time with it. So I will have the thing prepared, to do it in one, or do it in two, or do it in three. But to be in a position where I feel like I’m free, I’m awake and aware on set and not pre-empting too much…it’s difficult not to do that, and every actor will do it to a certain extent, but to try my best not to do that. And to just allow yourself to see what happens. All those decisions where you thought ‘I’ve got to do it this way’, well what happens if you actually flip it, and do it exactly the opposite way? Because there are a 1001 ways to do the same thing. So that’s really it – just a lot of time with the script.

Q: Following Shame, you’re in Haywire. How was Steven Soderbergh to work with?

A: Fantastic. Again, he was very precise and comes into a room and is like ‘OK, set the camera up here.’ He operates it himself, he lights it himself. He’s super-fast – bam, bam, bam and then out. Again, he’s got a good sense of humour. Very relaxed. Everyone just goes to work and gets the job done.

Q: So how does it feel that you’re so in demand at the moment?

A: It feels pretty good.  I mean, there are so many great films that don’t see the light of day and so many great performances and so many great actors that we will never see. So it’s nuts. The whole experience is crazy. When I started off doing this job, when I decided at 17 that this was what I wanted to do, this was the absolute ideal situation that I could’ve ever dreamed about being in. So it’s nuts, it’s amazing. But just trying to keep my head together, in terms of getting the work right, and keeping it simple.

Q: What is your background?

A: I was born in Heidelberg, and my Dad’s German, and my mum’s from Larne, from the north of Ireland. We moved to Killarney, which is right down the bottom of Ireland – a real beautiful part of the world. And from 2 to 18, I was there. Then I went to London when I was 19.

Q: Was there anyone in your family interested in the arts?

A: Nobody really in my family is involved in any parts of the arts. We had a restaurant down in Killarney, and the restaurant game is what I grew up knowing. My grandmother was my first one to support me, and really think it was a good idea – when I said to my parents I wanted to do it when I was 17. And then it went from there.

Q: Where did you get your interest in acting from?

A: A guy that was a past pupil of the school I went to. A guy called Donal Courtney. He had gone off to the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. And he came back to St. Brendan’s. We didn’t have any drama classes or anything like that. So he came back and said, ‘OK, drama-comedy classes on a Wednesday.’ And so I went to a few of those. And then he stopped doing the classes. I saw him in town and said, ‘What’s happening with the classes?’ He said, ‘I’ve set up a professional company in town. Why don’t you come and do some part time stuff when you’re not at school?’ And that was it. It started from there.

Q: Had you previously had any inclination to act?

A: No, I never thought of it before. I wanted to be a musician really. I wanted to be a guitar player, but I wasn’t good enough.

Q: Considering how busy you’ve been over the past year, have you had to make that decision between work and social life?

A: For now, I’m working. And this is something that’s been my number one passion, my goal. And I’m in an opportunity now where I can work with some pretty amazing people, so that’s what I’m focusing on.

Q: You’re married to the job?

A: At the moment, yeah. And then maybe I’ll bow out after a certain number of years and do something else. If I have a family, I’ll want to be there. I like the idea, if I have kids, that I’m there to see them and spend time. At the moment, I’ll just get the work done and we’ll see what happens.

SHAME is out now at cinemas nationwide

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