It’s strange seeing someone generally regarded as a prestigious actor coming off as being so relaxed. Fresh off his best actor win at the Venice Film Festival for his latest film Shame, Michael Fassbender seems positively giddy and happy for someone who has spent the better part of the day talking about his work in a film where he plays a man in the destructive throes of sexual addiction.
During an interview at TIFF he sits relaxed in a chair huddled around a group of reporters in a cramped hotel room wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt, leather jacket, and a cigarette behind his ear. The man essentially exudes cool and the natural sex appeal to make Shame’s lead character so thoroughly believable. Despite the natural good looks, he’s almost the opposite of the more uptight and stubborn characters he’s been known to play in films like X-Men: First Class, the soon to be released A Dangerous Method, and his previous project with director Steve McQueen, Hunger. For someone quickly making a career out of films with dark subject matter, Fassbender seems like an incredibly well adjusted human being.
Fassbender talked to Criticize This! about the brewing controversy behind his latest film, performing large amounts of nude scenes, and the struggle to put a human face on sex addiction.
Andrew Parker: As someone who is fast getting a reputation as being a sort of sex symbol was there any sort of trepidation in taking on a role in a film about sexual addiction?
Michael Fassbender: No, because you know I’m not like that. My job is as an actor and to not brand myself as much as I can and all that bullshit. It doesn’t interest me. My job is to do what interests me and go to places that are thought provoking and ask questions and have the audience take these journeys somewhat vicariously through this character. In order to do that I need to go to places where questions like that have to seem ridiculous to me. It’s sort of hindering in that respect.
AP: At times the audience is made to emphathize with Brandon, while at other points he is made to look like a predator. Where did you personally draw the line with the character?
MF: Well, again, that’s sort of the idea of when you want to bring somebody to the table that’s real and not in any way are you trying to flour around the character or worry about the audience liking him. I knew that the audience would like him because I liked him. He was a guy who knew that he was ill. He’s not the kind of guy who’s just going about his business and damn the consequences. He’s somebody who doesn’t like himself. He’s got a very low opinion of himself and that’s why he goes about abusing himself in such a way. I wanted him to be repulsive, and I wanted him to be vulnerable, and I wanted him to be all those things. Then he would be sort of real and people could recognize that and say “There’s elements of that in me.” Maybe then he’s not 100 miles away from us. I mean, he is a product of our time. I wanted to sort of embody all of those things.
There’s no relationship that he has with anybody in the story that’s a healthy one. Not with his boss, not with his sister, not with any of his sexual partners, and it’s an isolated sort of existence and his front is that of a successful guy who everyone else thinks is cool, but it’s so far from the truth. He just can’t allow himself to invest at all in other people. That’s the danger of intimacy and emotional responsibility. It’s just too much for him. Even when his sister comes in and hugs him, he can’t go through with it. That’s not a place where he feels safe and secure, therefore he has these very physical kinds of relationships devoid of any sort of intimacy. At one point where we think that he might find it with one of the girls he works with, he just sees that he can’t handle it. It’s overwhelming and frightening.
AP: You’ve just done two films that explore sexuality in really open terms between this and A Dangerous Method, but they go about them in different ways. Which was the harder of the two films for you to tackle thematically?
MF: You know, I’ve got to say that Shame was the more difficult of the two jobs just because I had just got done with two other jobs back to back before coming to Shame. I was kind of tired and it was so intense for a five week period where I did have to go to these dark places without any masks or any sort of exteriors to hide behind, if you like. At certain points I was going a little bit crazy and it was probably time to take a break soon. (laughs) But both were good fun because you get to go to these places and try to find these characters and try to find what makes them tick and where they’re coming from.
AP: There’s been talk that the film will have to be cut from a potential NC-17 rating to an R-Rating…
MF: Good Luck. (laughs) Good luck trying to convince Steve McQueen to do that.
AP: What’s your take on the NC-17 rating in the states that so many directors and studios seem completely frightened of?
MF: When I heard it was NC-17, I thought that meant it was over seventeen and I thought “That’s pretty cool.” (laughs) That’s a good result. You know, I don’ know. I think it could be a good thing because it gets people talking about it and that’s the important thing. That creates curiosity and I don’t know what happened to Reservoir Dogs here when Quentin (Tarantino) released it, but I know in England there was this sort of ban on it that only seemed to put more bums in the seats.
You know, I don’t know how people choose to make these ratings, but every day I notice when I’m out on the street when I’m buying breakfast cereal or a soda drink that sex is being sold to me in every single way. I’m at the airport and I see these big billboards with girls in lingere and it’s everywhere and no one else is really dealing with it like we are. We’re trying to talk about it in a real and honest way and intelligent way. Steve has really done that and made us question what our moral compass is and how we feel about it and how we relate to each other both physically and emotionally and how we confuse that with intimacy and the fact that access porn is so widespread and such a fast an increasing phenomenon. It’s there, so whatever rating people want to slap on it is totally irrelevant because I knew I wanted to do this and with Steve I knew that it wouldn’t be exploitative and that the sex scenes wouldn’t be titillating and all the usual shit we see in sex scenes during films. It’s real and it’s part of the story and trying to get inside this guys head and see where it is he’s coming from.
AP: What kind of a director is Steve McQueen for you to want to work with him a second time after Hunger?
MF: What kind? A good one. (laughs) He’s a very collaborative person. The one thing about him that struck me in Northern Ireland when we were doingHunger was the passion that everyone came to the set with from carpenters to prop guys, wardrobe, makeup, camera department. Everyone came to the set with so much passion and the idea that they didn’t want to let Steve down, and I thought that was really impressive. Then I thought we were making this film that’s really sort of relatable to the area and everyone there has this sort of history with the troubles in Northern Ireland. I began wondering what was going to happen with this one when we went to New York.
Again, it’s the same thing in New York. He leads by example. He’s very open and confident man. He’s not afraid to look sort of feminine and he’s not afraid to be nerdish, or stupid, or uncool. He’s not afraid to fall flat on his face, or he is afraid and he’s afraid to show it. (laughs) Those vulnerabilities make him like a giant and very strong. People sort of follow him and that sort of courage that he approaches his work with becomes infectious.
AP: Last time you worked with Steve you played a character in a prison, would you say that Brandon finds himself in a similar kind of prison made of his own devices?
MF: Yeah, I think that’s fair to say. I think he doesn’t seem to be living a free existence. He seems to be dictated to by whatever it is that is programming him. It’s interesting that in Hunger you have the one character where everything is being taken away from him and through that he finds some sort of freedom or liberation by using his body, as well. Then you have this new character who’s imprisoning himself with his body and all the choices of things that he could have. Look at these bottles of Vitamin Water in front of me. I’m drinking all three of them because I don’t know which one of them I should have. (laughs) It’s that sort of thing that’s so relevant about the piece. There’s so much stuff being thrown at us these days. “Have this, have this, you need this, you need this to appear more attractive to others, you need to be driving this car, you need to have this person on your arm to be more successful.” It’s all overwhelming and it can cause a great amount of anxiety.
AP: Did you feel you had to be particularly exposed and vulnerable to play your character the way he’s portrayed on screen, particularly with regard to the large amount of full frontal nude scenes you had to perform?
MF: Yeah. You know, it’s funny that everyone sort of talks about how you can take someone’s head off with a cheese cutter, but heaven forbid you show a penis. It seems so ludicrous to me. And it seems so nice, as well, because for women for a change to see a man exposed for much of the movie because so many times it’s a woman walking around naked in a garden while the guy has his pants on. Number one, I thought it was pretty cool that we were doing that, and secondly I don’t feel at any point that it’s exploitative or titillating. I think that we do need to go there, whether than means I’m on a bed naked at the beginning in the middle of his environment and you see that his body is sort of very much part of his own downfall. Then again, I didn’t think about it all that much. Steve told me I might need to do this and I told him not to even worry or think about it and to just tell me to do the thing. Then I’ll worry about all the things I’m supposed to be worrying about. I trust him just so implicitly that it wasn’t difficult.
AP: What was it like to film some of those sequences?
MF: It’s kind of embarrassing. (laughs)
AP: Really?
MF: Yeah. (laughs) What were you going to say? “You looked like you were having a gay old time!” (laughs) You know, you feel kind of silly taking your clothes off in front of strangers. You get to know them… pretty quickly. You know, I suppose the toughest thing is that if you have a partner in the scenes that they feel comfortable and they don’t feel like they’re being taken advantage of. You sort of try to create a relaxed atmosphere and that you aren’t stepping over their boundaries. You really sort of need to get on with it as it were.
AP: You’ve had a nice blend these past few years of working on some dramatic films and some more high profile Hollywood work. Where would you like to see yourself go from here?
MF: The way it is at the moment it’s kind of perfect for me because I get to work with great filmmakers no matter what. That’s it, really. That’s as great as it gets for me. It doesn’t matter. Obviously there are Hollywood studio films in there and it was important for me to do those kind of studio films. It was just a case of finding the right one that has the right ingredients, or as much as you can to mix it up and keep everybody guessing.
AP: Well, there has been talk about you possibly becoming one of the future James Bonds. Is that something you think you’d like to do in the future?
MF: Hey, I’d be lying if I said I don’t walk around my kitchen sort of humming the tune sometimes. It’s really flattering that people would say something like this, but I think Daniel (Craig) is doing a great job and we’ll see what he does in the next one. I don’t like to plan anything too far ahead, but then again, there’s always the villain role.
Shame opens in Toronto December 2, Vancouver December 9, Montreal December 16, and Ottawa January 6.
Top image: Michael Fassbender in Shame. Courtesy Alliance Films.
