Michael Fassbender (15 page)

S
ince his initial chat with Steve about his movie project with Abi Morgan about a sex addict, Michael had occasionally wondered what he had let himself in for after immediately saying that he wanted to be in it.

‘Obviously when he told me what the subject was about, my imagination started to do its thing, so I was prepared for compromising positions and nudity and all that but I was a bit worried that I’d perhaps bitten off more than I could chew,’ he admitted. But he trusted Steve and knew that it was an important story to tell. Also, the controversial nature of the film appealed to Michael’s sense of danger and of wanting to keep people – including himself – guessing about what he might do next. He never
wanted to feel too comfortable as an actor and, with the movie’s numerous full-frontal nude scenes, he wasn’t about to be disappointed on that score.

Unusually it was to be an entirely British made film, financed by Film Four and the UK Film Council and produced by Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, who later went on to produce
The King’s Speech
. It was to be called
Shame
– the overriding feeling that sex addicts feel about their condition – but to Michael’s relief, his first thought on reading the script was how beautifully written it was. He found that he really cared about the people in the story and thought that a reflection of Steve, who, he feels, really cares about human beings.

Michael was to play the lead role of sex addict Brandon with Carey Mulligan, who had co-starred with him in
Trial & Retribution
(and had since featured in
An Education
and
Drive
) playing his younger sister, Sissy. Steve and Abi’s first thoughts were to set the story in London but, when they tried to speak to sex addicts as part of their research, they had a problem getting anyone to open up to them. Then Steve heard about two women in New York who had studied sex addiction and they introduced him and Abi to several people with this affliction.

‘There was one guy – his wife was a very beautiful woman but there were a thousand other people he’d rather sleep with,’ Steve recalled. ‘It’s the availability of sex. It’s like there’s more fatty food in supermarkets, so people get
fat. There’s greater accessibility to alcohol, so guess what? More people get pissed. That’s how it is. Everyone wants to get lost a little bit these days – and understandably so.’

In his conversations with sex addicts, Steve noticed the word ‘shame’ kept cropping up after they had indulged themselves and he knew that he had stumbled upon the perfect title. They also had a huge feeling of self-hatred.

While they were in New York Steve decided to shoot the movie there. The story centres on Brandon – a
thirty-something
advertising executive who lives alone in a stylish, minimalist New York apartment. Handsome, successful and wealthy he may be but he is not in control of his life. His every move, every hour and seemingly every minute is consumed by his overwhelming obsession with sex. Each time he sees an attractive woman on the street, subway or in a bar, his head is turned and there is a leer on his face. At home and at work he accesses pornography on the Internet, hires prostitutes and picks up women – and the occasional man – in bars for instant sexual gratification. It leaves him feeling cold and unhappy but he seems unable to change or control his behaviour. Beneath the veneer of success he is a haunted, lonely man and his life becomes even more complicated when his wayward and emotionally unstable sister, Sissy, comes to stay with him.

Steve felt certain that the people he spoke to in New York were definitely addicted to sex and that the Internet made it easier for them to find self-gratification. ‘In my
day, the only access you had to pornography was the top shelf of a newsagent. Now you can click a mouse and get porn at any time of the day. So the Internet was very important in depicting the apparatus of a sex addict. Again, it is access to anything you want any time of day. Brandon is not at all exotic or a freak – he’s one of us.’

Michael also chatted to sex addicts and, although at first he was unsure about the reality of the condition, he, like Steve, was left in no doubt that it was a genuine one. ‘I didn’t really know much about it at first. The first I’d heard about sex addiction was celebrities and I suppose there’s the idea that they are spoiled and there’s a lot of choice there and that, if anybody had the chance, they would be indulging in the same way. But having spoken to people and researched it, I am without a doubt sure that it is a real condition. It’s happening and people’s lives are being devastated by it. It’s all consuming. There’s this idea of the city being twenty-four/seven and that whatever you’re into, it’s there in some form or other.’

But it was the fact that people are ashamed to talk about it as if it were any other addiction, and thus unable to get help, that fascinated Michael. ‘Initially you might laugh at the idea of sexual addiction but it becomes very serious pretty quickly when you see the devastation that it leaves in its wake. There seems to be some kind of stigma about it. It seems more acceptable to deal with alcohol or drug addiction. What’s interesting is that drugs or alcohol are outside influences that you bring in, whereas sex is within
us. It’s something that’s innately there and is part of our make-up and instinct, so when that becomes imbalanced and reaches an unhealthy situation, what do you do with it? Do you totally abstain, or do you try to negotiate life?’

In the end Michael focused on one particular man for his portrayal of Brandon. ‘I was very grateful that somebody was open enough and brave enough to give me an insight into it. Then it was a matter of treating it with the utmost respect and not hiding behind certain characters or caricatures of any sort. I tried to keep it as close to me as possible so that it was relevant to me, just as it could be to any regular guy on the street.’

Brandon has problems with intimacy because he doesn’t feel in control of such things. This makes him lonely and destructive. He’s a complex character and one that Michael, as an actor, enjoyed trying to understand. ‘Most men think about sex a lot. We know that. But for someone like Brandon it is a compulsion. That’s where the shame comes in: you’re no longer in control of your choices.’

The only woman Brandon finds attractive but cannot treat in his predatory, love-’em-and-leave-’em way is his work colleague Marianne (Nicole Beharie). The two go on a date where she teases him about his lack of commitment in relationships, the longest of which has lasted just four months. Later, to Brandon’s shock, he is unable to sexually perform with her in bed.

In an interview with the
Irish Independent
, he opened up a little about his own personal life. ‘I could relate to certain
elements of Brandon. A lot of guy friends I’ve spoken to since then have said the same thing. But what has really struck me is how grateful I am to have a healthy relationship with sex and my own sexual life. I like intimacy, whereas Brandon flinches at the notion. There’s no gratification in his sexual acts. It’s just a compulsion, with no nourishment or pleasure.’

The shoot on
X-Men: First Class
ran a little over schedule, cutting into Michael’s precious preparation time. This was always very intense and comprehensive and he felt that he particularly needed it for a complex man like Brandon in
Shame
. An interview with
Dazed & Confused
magazine gave some insight into his technique. ‘When dealing with any fictional character I write a biography,’ he explained. ‘That’s simply to give me a confidence within the character and what he’s going through in the here and now. That’s one of the first things I do: What did his parents do? What was he like in school? What does he have for breakfast? Whatever the questions are. Those are the kind of things that goes into the preparation.

‘I spent a lot of time with the script, reading and
re-reading
it. So through that I get to understand the rhythms of the text and the rhythms of the character, the physical life of the character. You just try to find it in yourself. But most of it, though, is down to me working with the script, working with the dialogue and understanding the character. All these things start to seep into your enamel. That’s the system I do with every job.’

In another interview, he compared his approach to that of a sportsman getting to the top of his profession through constant practice. ‘Look, there are no secrets to anything in life. Tiger Woods is Tiger Woods because he practised that fucking swing a hundred times a day. Why should acting be any different? It’s just boring repetition and, through that, I find things start to break down and you start to find the nuances, all the interesting little details.’

But his
X-Men
commitment meant that his time was limited. They had just five weeks to film it and so he busily immersed himself in the script, doing his usual re-reading during filming and learning more about the character and his inner demons as he went along.

Michael also took time out in between finishing
X-Men: First Class
and focusing on
Shame
to attend a special tribute to the British producer Jeremy Thomas, arranged by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences at the Curzon Theatre in London on 25 November. Jeremy, whose father Ralph had directed the
Doctor
… series of comedies and whose uncle Gerald the
Carry On
movies, had won an Oscar in 1988 for
The Last Emperor
, the first of his many collaborations with Bernardo Bertolucci.

Tom Conti, who had starred in Jeremy’s 1983 production
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
, hosted the evening of spoken tributes, film clips, video messages and conversation covering Jeremy’s 40-year career. Michael
introduced the first footage from
A Dangerous Method
, for which Jeremy had acted as producer.

Michael also managed to squeeze in three days of filming on John Maclean’s second short movie,
Pitch Black Heist
, which saw him team up again with Liam Cunningham as two crooks who try to break into an office safe. But the presence of a light-activated alarm system means they have to do it in darkness. Despite John having a bigger budget this time, it was still made for less than
£
30,000 and the blacked-out screen used for the final part of the 13-minute film was a canny cost-saving ploy. Most of the short was filmed at the house of a friend and the dialogue was recorded later. The rest of it, featuring the two thieves discussing the robbery in a pub, was shot at The Dolphin in Hackney, near where Michael lives.

Despite being intrigued by the subject matter of
Shame
and excited by the prospect of working with Steve again, Michael was not looking forward to baring all on screen. ‘I was self-conscious, for sure, but it was something I had to get over very quickly,’ he said. ‘Those scenes are really where you get an insight into the guy’s psyche. When you see him naked, it’s in more ways than one. So by concentrating on that you get over the fact that you’re stark bollock naked. It’s not that big a deal anyway. A proportion of us in the human race have penises and another proportion of them have seen them, whether they be mothers, girlfriends or partners or
whatever, so I don’t know why it’s so unusual to show that in a movie.’

Further, he reasoned, women had been stripping off in movies for years and it was about time the tables were turned. ‘For women it must be refreshing to not always have to see women parading around naked while the guy always has his pants on.’

Michael also argued that there was far less of a commotion about violence in film than sex and nudity, saying that it seems to be more the norm to have a gun in your hand and shooting somebody. He was more concerned about the welfare of the actresses with whom he shared the sex scenes than his own anxieties. ‘You try to make sure that your partner in the scene is comfortable. I’d say, “Let’s go for it now and it’ll be over soon.” It sounds terrible, like a really bad chat-up line!’ he said with a laugh.

Carey Mulligan thought Michael had been brave to take on the role. ‘A lot of actors, especially when they are as talented and good looking as Michael, only want parts where they are shown in a good light,’ she told the
Irish Examiner
. ‘If I learned anything working with Michael, it’s that he’s utterly fearless.’

Michael returned the compliment to Carey. ‘She was very easy to work with because she was brave, throwing herself into the mix. When you’re working with Steve it can be quite a frightening experience but also very exciting and educational because there are no safety rails and nowhere to hide.’

Carey admitted to being nervous working with Michael because she admired him so much as an actor. ‘It was quite scary because I’ve watched him and looked up to him for years and so it was like working with one of my idols. But he’s great. He makes you feel so comfortable and he’s very supportive.’

Interestingly, they decided not to socialise outside of filming because the characters they were playing were at loggerheads with each other and the two actors felt it would help their work if they didn’t become too friendly.

Working with Steve may be a ‘frightening experience’ (in Michael’s words) but it was always exhilarating and the bond between the two men was becoming ever stronger. Both wanted to work with each other more than anything else and there was a very real mutual respect. ‘I really consider Steve to be a genius. I know that’s a word that gets bandied around but when I met him, I knew it was a life-changing moment for me,’ said Michael. ‘He’s a great leader. He inspires people. When we were making
Hunger
, he worked with such passion. I could see it so clearly on people’s faces, the joy of coming to work every day. In New York, shooting
Shame
, I saw the same thing again. People want to do their very best for him. They don’t want to let him down.’

Michael also appreciated Steve’s humility and
no-nonsense
approach to life. Despite the fact that Michael knew nothing about the art world, he said that Steve never made him feel inadequate or stupid. ‘There’s something
very old-school mannerly about him. I’ve really found my teacher in Steve and hopefully he’s found an apprentice in me,’ he told the
Hollywood Reporter
.