The scene Michael Fassbender wants to delete from history: “I don’t like that performance”
Michael Fassbender is one of the most fascinating leading men working in Hollywood today, and that’s precisely because it’s hard to get a read on what he really thinks about acting.
When the steely-eyed German-Irish actor first began making waves in the late 2000s with captivating turns in Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Shame, it seemed like a new star was about to be born. Then, he added a scene-stealing supporting role as Lieutenant Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds to his repertoire, and it seemed like the sky was the limit, because it demonstrated Old Hollywood charm to go with his trademark intensity.
In many ways, though, during the 2010s, Fassbender both did and didn’t live up to this early promise. He appeared in a host of acclaimed indies like Frank, Slow West, and Trespass Against Us, which all pointed to an actor who wanted to take risks with his career. However, these films were held back by a succession of dismal Hollywood blockbusters (Assassin’s Creed, Prometheus), an airport thriller adaptation so terrible it has been memory-holed by most of the populace (The Snowman), and, most notably, a four-movie run as the villainous Magneto in the X-Men franchise.
In truth, playing the ‘Master of Magnetism’ in a series of films that range from great (First Class, Days of Future Past) to middling (Apocalypse) to disastrous (Dark Phoenix) arguably spoke to Fassbender’s relationship with acting during this period. He had screen presence to burn in 2011’s First Class, a movie that pretty much cast him as a vengeful James Bond with superpowers for the first 45 minutes. This stretch of the film was, of course, awesome, and even though his accent went slightly squee whiff as the film went on (“I am Mag-kneee-to”), he still brought depth and charisma to a role most audiences thought Sir Ian McKellan had already defined.
Three years later, though, and Fassbender’s performance had already dipped slightly. In Days of the Future Past, he was still very watchable, but some of the magic had gone, and the glimmer of malice in his eyes that was so obvious in First Class had been replaced by something more performatively villainous. The star himself must have noticed this, too, because when he was shown a scene from the movie during a career retrospective event at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016, he barely stopped short of cringing on stage.
“I don’t actually like that performance there, to be honest,” Fassbender confessed after watching a showdown scene between he and James McAvoy’s Professor Xavier on board the X-Jet. “I just think it’s me shouting.” With a grimace, followed by a mock angry face and some flailing limbs, he scoffed, “It’s just like some dude shouting.”
This is a fascinating insight from an actor into the limitations of his own performance, albeit something that might fly over the heads of most audience members. To them, it’s just another scene of Fassbender demonstrating the power and gravitas of Magneto, a man who believes he has been wronged by humanity, mutants, and his former best friend alike. But Fassbender clocked there was something missing in his performance, and it embarrassed him.
Is it any coincidence, then, that Fassbender’s next two go-arounds as Magneto, which came during a period where he was making more duds than hits, featured performances that felt increasingly phoned in? In fact, despite proclaiming to have “had a great run” that he “thoroughly enjoyed” as the character, he chose to walk away from acting entirely for four long years after Dark Phoenix’s release in 2019.
Perhaps working within the strictures of blockbuster comic book storytelling had exhausted him, or maybe he’d had his fill of Hollywood as a whole. Whatever the case, Fassbender chose to pull a Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director he worked so beautifully with) by leaving the movie business behind to screech around race tracks, even competing twice at the fabled 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Would someone who was still in love with acting have done that? I think not.
