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Michael Fassbender’s fame has had a slow-build over the last
few years — appearing in “300” and “Inglorious Bastards” in addition to a few
artsy, well-respected movies that us Americans aren’t as interested in. But his
notoriety is about to go through the roof with this coming summer’s release of the
X-men prequel, “X-Men: First Class” in which he plays Erik Lensherr, i.e. the
evil Magneto, as a young man.
While he was promoting “Jane Eyre” – Cary Fukunaga’s
interpretation of the Charlotte Bronte novel in which Fassbender plays the
smoldering Mr. Rochester — we got the Irish-German actor to spill a few details
about the highly anticipated X-Men film.
How much will this “X-Men” go into your character
Magneto’s past?
You will see a little
bit of that, yeah, at the beginning but I thought what was interesting was what
happened to him after the war – he gets that young gypsy girl out of the
concentration camp that he falls in love with. They take off together and have
a baby and the mob ends up going crazy and burning down the house and the child
dies in the blaze. Magneto goes ape shit and kills everybody. She’s freaked out
and leaves him. So by the time we get to him in the movie, he’s a bit of a
loner, really.
Metro: Performing opposite James McAvoy who plays Professor
X – who your character is close friends with before you become mortal enemies – must’ve been an attractive component to doing this film.
Fassbender: Definitely a big draw
for me. At signing up, I only knew that James was attached to be in the film so
I thought okay, he’s an intelligent guy and he’ll bring something to it.
Can you talk a little bit about the changes we see
Magneto go through in the film?
It’s kind of like Martin Luther King Jr. and
Malcolm X — Charles [Professor X] being Martin Luther and Erik [Magneto] being
Malcolm X — these two ideals, two intelligent guys but with different methods
of achieving what they want. Erik doesn’t trust humans and thinks they need to
be wiped away and I can kind of see his point. It’s like Homo Sapiens,
Neanderthals … it’s like it’s the next stage of evolution. And humans have made
a bit of balls of it. We have, haven’t we?
How was working with the special effects?
Ah that’s John Dykstra
— he’s the guy who did the original Star Wars and sh—t. There’s something for
the fanatics out there. He’s an amazing guy. But how do I feel about acting
with a tennis ball? That didn’t bother me so much. It’s like saying in theater
that it’s supposed to be cold and you see a town off in the distance — it’s
kind of the same thing.
How do you feel about the fact that after this movie
comes out, you won’t be able to walk down the street in peace.
It’s going to be an
interesting thing. There are so many X-Men fans out there. Hopefully, they’re
going to be happy. They didn’t seem to be happy with the last two installments
so hopefully this will please them again.
