Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender (; born 2 April 1977) is a German and Irish actor, racing driver and producer. 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, 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 the title role in the biographical drama Steve Jobs (2015), respectively, earned him Academy Award nominations 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–present). Married to Swedish actress Alicia Vikander since 2017, he has two sons.

Early life and education Fassbender was born on 2 April 1977 in Heidelberg, a city in the West German state of Baden-Württemberg. His mother, Adele, is originally from Larne, Northern Ireland, and his father, Josef Fassbender, is German. Fassbender has an elder sister, Catherine, a neuropsychologist. 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 the town of Killarney, 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. He and Catherine spent summer holidays in Germany. He attended Fossa National School in Fossa and St Brendan's College in Killarney. At the age of 17, Fassbender decided to become an actor when he was cast in a play. He left home at the age of 19 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.

Acting career 2001–2005: Television work

Fassbender's first screen role was as Pat Christenson in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's award-winning television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). In 2003, 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. 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 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 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."

In 2009, Fassbender appeared in Quentin Tarantino's revisionist World War II comedy-drama Inglourious Basterds as British officer Archie Hicox. Eric Kohn of IndieWire wrote, "Hell, it's one of the best films of the century. The cast is superb". The same year, Fassbender appeared in the British drama Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold. Fassbender plays the boyfriend of a single mother with two children played by Kierston Wareing. Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "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 said 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 in 2011, Fassbender said: "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 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.

2011–2019: Mainstream success 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 the Volpi Cup for Best Actor Award for his portrayal of Brandon. Fassbender was a serious contender for an Academy Award for Best Actor, 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 the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama.

In 2012, he appeared as an MI6 agent in Haywire, an action-thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh, 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 (2014), the sequel to X-Men: First Class. Fassbender also stars in the title role of Frank (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, 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, Actor Award, BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award, and Golden Globe Award, all for Best Lead Actor.

Fassbender took on the role of Macbeth in a film directed by Justin Kurzel, with Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth and David Thewlis as King Duncan. Filming began in January 2014 and the film premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, Fassbender again played Magneto in the film X-Men: Apocalypse. He next starred in The Light Between Oceans, based on the novel by M. L. Stedman, and directed by Derek Cianfrance; the film began filming in New Zealand in 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. Kurzel directed and Cotillard had a leading role.

In May 2017, Fassbender reprised his role as the android David and played another character in the sequel to Prometheus, Alien: Covenant. In 2015, he 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.

2020–present: Acting hiatus and return 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 wrote, "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.

In 2024, Fassbender began starring in the action thriller series The Agency for Paramount+, and played a supporting role in the Irish comedy-drama Kneecap. In 2025, he starred opposite Cate Blanchett in Steven Soderbergh's spy thriller film Black Bag, which received critical acclaim. He also stars alongside his wife Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell in Na Hong-jin's 2025 thriller Hope and alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Hasselhoff in the martial arts comedy feature Kung Fury 2, a sequel to the 2015 short film. Principal photography on Kung Fury 2 was completed by 2019, but legal issues have so far prevented the film's release.

Auto racing 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.

Fassbender 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.

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 next 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.

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.

Complete European Le Mans Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap) Year Entrant Class Chassis Engine 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rank Points 2020 Proton Competition LMGTE Porsche 911 RSR Porsche 4.0 L Flat-6 LEC SPA LEC MNZ ALG 6th 47 2021 Proton Competition LMGTE Porsche 911 RSR-19 Porsche 4.2 L Flat-6 CAT RBR LEC MNZ SPA ALG 5th 61 2022 Proton Competition LMGTE Porsche 911 RSR-19 Porsche 4.2 L Flat-6 LEC IMO MNZ CAT SPA ALG 14th 35 2023 Proton Competition LMGTE Porsche 911 RSR-19 Porsche 4.2 L Flat-6 CAT LEC ARA SPA ALG ALG 13th 22

Complete 24 Hours of Le Mans results Year Team Co-drivers Car Class Laps Proton Competition Matt Campbell Zacharie Robichon Porsche 911 RSR-19 LMGTEAm 329 51st 16th Proton Competition Richard Lietz Martin Rump Porsche 911 RSR-19 LMGTEAm 246 DNF DNF

Personal life

In June 2012, Fassbender told GQ magazine that he was dating American actress Nicole Beharie, with whom he had worked on Shame. In December 2014, he began dating Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, with whom he had worked on The Light Between Oceans. They married in Ibiza on 14 October 2017 They moved to Portugal in 2017 and purchased a home in the Alfama district of Lisbon. Fassbender sold the property in the Hackney area of London he had lived in since 1996.

Fassbender is known for preferring to keep his personal life private. He has said that he was an altar boy as a child and is now a lapsed Catholic, but still goes to church to light candles. He is a lifelong supporter of Liverpool F.C.. He holds a German passport, and has said he intended to get an Irish passport "for years and just never got around to it". He has expressed interest in performing in a German-language film or play.

In 2010, Fassbender's ex-girlfriend Sunawin Andrews accused him of two incidents of domestic abuse that had occurred the previous year. News reports cited a court petition and a restraining order Andrews filed alleging that Fassbender was screaming at her while driving recklessly; after she got out of the car, he allegedly drove forward and dragged her alongside it. 86th Academy Awards (2013): nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as Edwin Epps in 12 Years a Slave 88th Academy Awards (2015): nomination for Best Actor, as Steve Jobs in Steve Jobs

Fassbender has received an Actor Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and the Venice International Film Festival's Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He has also received nominations for four BAFTAs, three Golden Globe Awards, and two European Film Awards.