THE FASSBENDER INTERVIEW: Fourth and final part
KillarneyToday.com Exclusive
MICHAEL Fassbender breezes through the door of West End House, flashes his trademark ear-to-ear smile, extends a firm handshake and slides into a corner seat inside a table. He contemplates a pint, or maybe a coffee, but eventually settles for tea.
True to his word, his father, Josef, has him there for six, just as the Angelus bells chime across the road in Killarney’s landmark St Mary’s Cathedral.
It’s familiar territory to both. It was their family-run restaurant for over two decades and Michael glances around him and makes a mental note to tell the new owners of The Desire Kitchen at the West End that he likes what they’ve done with the place.
In town for an all-too-brief break before embarking on a gruelling schedule of press and promotion for his new work Assassins Creed, Michael and his Oscar winning partner, Alicia Vikander, had just returned from Japan. And he loved the place.
“I was just piggybacking on a trip with Alicia. She was doing some promotional work for Bourne. It was our first time there and it was quite amazing,” he reflects.
His new movie PR schedule will take him around the world with an exhausting programme of interviews and TV chat shows lined up and KillarneyToday.com wonders if it has reached a stage where he wakes up in the mornings wondering what city he had slept in?
“A little bit,” is the reply.
“I’ve had a few of those moments recently. You wake up in a hotel room and you walk into the cupboard thinking you’re going to the toilet. It can be a little bit disorientating but I’m loving it.”
Despite the air miles and the time zone confusion, when Assassins Creed is sufficiently promoted, Michael plans to take a few months off – probably as many as six – to travel even further and, he says, to develop.
He had been in London until last January on the set of Justin Kurzel’s action adventure series based on the video game franchise of the same name. A trip to Norway was fulfilled, touching base back in London for two days, before he set off on a five-month The Light Between Oceans stint in New Zealand and Australia. Next up was Venice and numerous other cities for promotional work for his first movie starring alongside, Alicia, as well as for Trespass Against Us which was released in Toronto.
Don’t call it work, though. It’s much more fulfilling that that: “It has been an unbelievable journey, to be honest, to be working with the best people. That has always been the goal, to be working with the best in the industry and I’m fortunate enough that that’s exactly what has happened,” he said between sips of strong tea and occasional not for print anecdotes.
During his free time, from now until next summer, Michael will get in as much surfing as he possibly can and, on his travels around the world, he loves nothing more than meeting up with pals from Killarney to surf and to chat.
“I was recently filming in Sydney and I went surfing with Colm Bowler whose family has Bowler’s Garage in Killarney. He has been out there for 14 years. He’s pretty handy on the surfboard, it must be said. That was great. I also met Mike Guerin, from Fossa, during filming of The Light Between Oceans.
Michael also intends devoting some time to block-building and fine-tuning a number of projects planned by his own production company, DMC, set up a few years back with business partner Conor McCaughan, from Ballycastle, Co Antrim. Their first film was action western Slow West – described as one of the best of 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival – and they also had a role to play in the production of the latest blockbuster Assassins Creed.
“We’ve got other films and TV stuff that we’re working on developing so I’ll spend time doing that. I’d like to try directing, I’d like to give it a go at some point, definitely,” he said.
One of the projects that really excites the Fossa man is developing storylines based on Irish myths and legends, including boyhood hero Cúchulainn.
“That’s something that I’m very passionate about. Stories about Na Fianna or Cúchulainn or any of the Irish myths have always fascinated me. There’s so much there with so many great stories and characters and worlds to create and occupy and that’s definitely something to create,” he said.
Now in the fortunate position to be able to cherry-pick his roles, Michael doesn’t forget the long and often difficult road, paved with anything but gold, he had to travel, post drama school, to make it to the Hollywood A-list.
After some theatre work on Three Sisters with the Oxford Stage Company, a number of years were spent grafting the nightshift – eight at night until seven in the morning – unloading trucks full of books in a warehouse in London or long hours behind city bars pulling pints. It might seem like a distant memory now but for many years it was very much the reality.
“I wasn’t going for any auditions as I didn’t have much energy after working all night so I stopped the warehouse job and went back to bar work and two weeks later I got auditions for Pearl Harbour and Band of Brothers.
“It was a close one but Ben Affleck ended up playing the Pearl Harbour part,” he laughed.
Michael did land the 2001 Band of Brothers mini-series gig, however, and working for the Spielberg-Hanks dream team provided great exposure and, just as importantly at the time, nine months of solid work.
“Band of Brothers was my first television job and it was such a massive one, it was an incredible break for me. On the back of that I went out to LA for the first time for three months but I didn’t really make a proper living out of acting, at least not that I could depend on, until I was 27 which was about five years later. So there was a lot of bar work and odd jobs while I was doing auditioning.
“I might get something and then I’d have to wait until eight months later to pick something up again and six months later another part would come up. It was sporadic and mainly TV stuff,” he said.
Fortunately for Michael Fassbender, he had made his way on to the radar of gifted London-based director Steve McQueen and he was offered the part of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in the gripping 2008 bio-pic Hunger which, Michael insists, will always be his favourite role.
“It was just an amazing experience, for several reasons… the topic matter, meeting Steve McQueen, the weight loss, that scene with Liam Cunningham and getting to become friends with him,” he said.
Perhaps a fraction later than he had hoped, his powerful performance in that role resulted in Michael Fassbender arriving centre stage with a vengeance. And he hasn’t released that grip.
He again worked with McQueen in Shame and 12 Years A Slave and, after that, the offers came flooding in, with Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations the inevitable follow-on for an actor of such outstanding quality and integrity.
The rest is motion picture history. And the credits will keep on rolling for the Killarney man who will never forget where he came from.
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