Michael Fassbender (German pronunciation: [ˈmɪçaʔeːl ˈfasbɛndɐ]; 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.
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.
Raised Catholic, Fassbender served as an altar boy at the church his family attended. 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.
Fassbender's first screen role was as Pat Christenson in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's award-winning television miniseries Band of Brothers (2001). He played Azazeal in both series of Hex on Sky One and starred in the video for the song "Blind Pilots" by the British band The Cooper Temple Clause. In the video, he plays a man out with friends on a stag night who slowly transforms into a goat. 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 addition, Fassbender produced, directed, and starred in a stage version of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, along with his production company. He appeared in Angel (UK title: The Real Life of Angel Deverell), about the rise and fall of an eccentric young British writer (played by Romola Garai) in the early 20th century. Fassbender plays her love interest, an average painter named Esmé. The drama—the first English-language effort by French director François Ozon and based on the novel by Elizabeth Taylor—premiered on 17 February 2007 at the Berlin International Film Festival and on 14 March 2007 in Paris. He then made a brief appearance in Dean Cavanagh and Irvine Welsh's Wedding Belles as Barney, speaking with a Scottish accent.
In 2006, Fassbender played Stelios, a young Spartan warrior, in 300, a fantasy action film directed by Zack Snyder. The film was a commercial success. 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 125 pounds (57 kg) 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 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.