Michael Fassbender (5 page)

The next job that Michael took to help pay the bills was a TV commercial for Guinness. It seemed to be just another job and not a very dramatically satisfying one at that. But it was to have the most unexpected consequences as it turned him into an overnight star… in Ireland.

T
he Guinness advert showed Michael playing a man, seen home alone in Dublin. On the spur of the moment he leaves the house and strides down to the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, where he dives in and swims, fully-clothed, across the Atlantic. Arriving in America, he walks with determination through New York and into a bar where he confronts a man drinking. The two stare at each other for a moment before the new arrival says, ‘Sorry.' There's a tense pause until they smile, embrace each other and enjoy a pint of Guinness together.

The advert, called
The Quarrel
, was first shown on 3 December 2003 and struck a real chord with the public.
After years of acting in various TV dramas, it was this that made him a recognisable face in his homeland.

It was a particularly pleasant job for Michael because he also got to drink a fair bit of the famous product. ‘They want you to do as many takes as they can physically get out of you, so by the end I was pretty drunk!' he told Irish chat-show host Ryan Tubridy on
The Late Late Show
. It also opened his eyes to what he thought just might be the best job in the world. ‘A guy travels around with them and he pours the perfect pint for the Guinness campaigns,' he said. ‘And I thought, “What a brilliant job!” I thought I had a brilliant job but that's pretty unique.' Michael cheekily asked if they could give him ‘a Guinness credit card' so that he could have free Guinness for the rest of his life but this was declined!

The thought of a swift rise to stardom after the false dawn that was
Band of Brothers
was now a thing of the past but acting work was steadily increasing and Michael, now 26, was becoming a ‘jobbing actor'. His next TV role was a high-profile one – that of Guy Fawkes in a BBC2 drama called
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot
, by the acclaimed writer Jimmy McGovern. The two-part story
re-told
the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the reign of King James I and saw Michael co-starring in a strong cast that included Robert Carlyle as King James, Emilia Fox, Tim McInnerny and Daniela Nardini.

Michael grew a beard and moustache for the role and enjoyed dressing up in a flowing white shirt and tight
breeches, and riding a horse. The drama was filmed in Romania and, despite his impressive co-stars, he managed to draw praise from both the critics and the writer. The
Sunday Times
commented, ‘Mention should also be made of the devastatingly handsome Michael Fassbender as Guy Fawkes.'
The Observer
said, ‘This is drama of the highest order,' and the
Daily Mirror
called it ‘a fine drama brimming with passion, hell-fire and damnation'. And Jimmy McGovern, after watching Michael's brooding, cold-hearted and ruthless portrayal of Fawkes, was perhaps the first to say, ‘He's the next James Bond.'

Another strong role for Michael was a TV drama called
Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder – The Case of Charles Bravo
in 2004. The interesting pilot for a proposed series, it was such a success that more duly followed. The format had the Oscar-winning
Gosford Park
writer and
Downton Abbey
creator Fellowes introducing a famous real-life murder mystery, which was then dramatised, with Julian cropping up on screen from time to time to narrate details and to invite viewers to play detective and find out ‘whodunit'.

Michael played the title role of Charles Bravo, a newly married barrister who died from poisoning in April 1876 in an incident that scandalised Victorian society. It raked up a background of sex, intrigue and jealousy, and the newspapers had a field day. Bravo's wife, Florence, was the wealthy daughter of an Australian millionaire and grew up in a magnificent stately home in Oxfordshire. At the age of
19, she married an MP's son, Alexander Ricardo, and enjoyed a privileged lifestyle inside the coveted circle of high society. But Ricardo was a violent alcoholic who hit Florence. After he died suddenly in 1871, she inherited all he had and embarked on an affair with an eminent doctor, James Gully, who was 40 years her senior. During a house party in 1872, the host returned from a walk unexpectedly to find Florence and Gully having sex on the
drawing-room
sofa. The story quickly spread around London and Florence was finished in society. There was worse to come. She had fallen pregnant by Gully and he performed an abortion on her.

Desperate to reclaim some of her reputation, Florence lowered her sights to focus on an ambitious young barrister, Charles Bravo. He was beneath her in the social class rankings but was about as good as she could now get in husband material and he was attracted by her fortune as much as her prettiness. When she wanted to keep control of her capital, Bravo threatened not to marry her, so she agreed to give him part of her fortune. Bravo went through with the marriage, even though she had admitted her affair to him and her pregnancy by Gully. But later he became violent, making Florence's life a misery and frightening her and her companion, Mrs Cox.

After Bravo's death, an inquest found that he had been wilfully poisoned but there was insufficient evidence to fix the guilt on any person or persons. Despite the most exhaustive investigations at the time, no one was ever
charged with his murder. Fellowes runs through suspects – Florence, Mrs Cox (who may have resented Bravo's treatment of her mistress) and the equerry whom Bravo had fired for insolence and who had vowed to get revenge. At the end of the programme he gives his opinion on who he thinks did it while the audience is left to agree or disagree.

With a regular stream of increasingly good roles coming his way, Michael had the confidence to give up bar work again and become a full-time actor. It was a big moment and one that he appreciated and respected, having learned from the false dawn of
Band of Brothers
that success and stardom cannot be expected, even at the most promising of times.

In the summer of 2004 he flew out to Canada to star in a TV movie called
A Bear Named Winnie
. This charming tale centred on the origin of the Winnie the Pooh stories written by AA Milne and starred Stephen Fry as a zookeeper and David Suchet as an army general. Michael thoroughly enjoyed filming because he got to work with three adorable black bear cubs.

In the film he played Lt. Harry Colebourn of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps who, on a whim, bought a bear cub from a hunter in Ontario in 1914. The
English-born
Colebourn named her Winnie, after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg. Later, the bear accompanied him to England where he was posted to a militia cavalry regiment called The Fort Garry Horse. Here Winnie
became an unofficial mascot of the regiment, with whom Colebourn worked as a veterinarian. When he was sent to France in 1914, he donated the bear to London Zoo. It was here that she became a big favourite with a young boy named Christopher Robin, who liked to visit the zoo with his father, Alan Alexander Milne. Christopher Robin even changed the name of his teddy bear, Edward Bear, to Winnie, and they became inseparable. AA Milne was charmed by the way his son talked and played with the bear and this inspired him to write his first Winnie the Pooh book in 1926. After the war, Colebourn planned to take Winnie back to Canada but when he saw how children were so enchanted by her, he changed his mind and she lived at London Zoo for 20 years.

Back home in Killarney, Josef and Adele were delighted that their son was making a go of his career and was now able to do it full time. He went back to visit them frequently and always over Christmas and the New Year if he wasn't working.

Following the charm of
A Bear Named Winnie
, his next role could hardly have been in sharper contrast, as a psychotic serial killer with a foot fetish! It was in a BBC TV Sherlock Holmes drama in which Rupert Everett took on the role of the legendary sleuth in
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking
, with Ian Hart as Dr Watson. The film, shown on Boxing Day 2004, was not written by Holmes's creator, Conan Doyle, but was an original screenplay by scriptwriter Allan Cubitt.

The rather odd story had a sinister-looking Michael playing a character with a foot fetish who gets his kicks by strangling aristocratic young women with one of their own stockings and sticking the other one down their throat. Holmes investigates after the body of a 17-year-old girl fished out of the River Thames is found to be Lady Alice, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. When a previous victim of the same killer is identified as a ladies maid, Sarah O'Brien, Holmes suspects Charles Allen, the footman for the Duke and Duchess who formerly worked for the same aristocratic family as Sarah. Meanwhile, the daughter of Lord and Lady Massingham, Lady Georgina, is found dead, hanging from a lamppost in London with a stocking around her neck and another in her mouth.

Another young girl is attacked but survives to tell the tale and positively identifies Allen as her attacker when Holmes brings him in for questioning. This marks Michael's first appearance in the film after almost an hour as the surly footman with a sinister sneer. To Holmes's frustration, Allen's fingerprints do not match those found on a bottle of brandy that the killer used to drug his victim with a sleeping draft. What's more, Allen has a cast-iron alibi. On the day of the two most recent murders he attended the Duchess at two formal occasions where he was seen by hundreds of people. Holmes is convinced Allen is the killer, but how is he getting away with it? He later realises that the only possible solution is that Allen
has an identical twin brother who is aiding him in his dastardly deeds.

So, despite his late entrance in the drama, Michael later gets double the exposure when Holmes and Watson fight the Allen twins, with Michael playing the dual roles. In playing the fetish fiend, Michael had some creepy scenes, kissing and caressing young women's feet. Several critics thought the acting and photography was fine but that the plot fizzled out rather lamely. ‘Even if the surprise ending was something of a cop-out, it still managed to grip; and it was beautifully shot,' said the
Sunday Times
.

‘On the whole it worked extremely well. The production was stylish, dark and atmospheric with a classic London pea-souper serving as a Dickensian metaphor for the moral murk beyond the brightly lit Edwardian interiors,' commented
The Times
, while the
Observer
considered it to be ‘a real treat'.

The
Daily Express
was less impressed. ‘Unfortunately, the story – a brand new one, written by Allan Cubitt, about a deranged serial killer who abducted society debutantes – was full of ridiculous anachronisms and owed more to
The Silence Of The Lambs
than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,' it said.

A pattern was forming in which Michael either played loveable, charming characters or nasty, evil ones. Casting directors seemed to think that his ability to appear brooding could be seen as either heroic or malicious and his distinctive wide grin as either sweet or sinister. It
enabled him to play a variety of roles and the work came rolling in.

The popular ITV1 drama series
William and Mary
co-starred
Martin Clunes and Julie Graham in the title roles as an undertaker and a midwife who become romantically involved. It was a warm-hearted drama that appealed to a Sunday-night TV audience. In the third episode of the third series Michael played a handsome Latvian chef named Lukasz, whose partner Rosie (Clara Salaman) is pregnant with his baby. With the birth imminent, Mary and her fellow midwife and best friend Doris (Claire Hackett) visit and Doris, who fancies Lukasz, is pleased to see him in a tight white vest. At first, Lukasz helps Rosie through her contractions by holding her hand but then he makes an excuse to go in the kitchen. Mary has a quiet word with him, persuading him to join Rosie in the home-birthing pool, and an excited Doris changes her seat to get a better view as he walks in and strips to his underpants! But after the baby is successfully delivered, he makes a play for Mary before walking out on Rosie.

Michael was to take on a far more devilish role in Sky One's supernatural series
Hex
, which was generally regarded as Britain's answer to the hugely successful US teen show,
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
. Filmed to the same high-quality standards, it was shot on location at the magnificent Englefield House in Berkshire, which doubled as the fictitious English school, Medenham Hall, set on the
site of an 18th-century scandal when the Medenham Witches were tried and executed.

When the rather shy Cassie (Christina Cole) enrols at the school, her latent telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities are awakened whenever she touches an antique vase that had been used in voodoo rituals by the Medenham witches. Her roommate, Thelma (Jemima Rooper), who has a crush on her, discovers that Cassie is a descendent of the witches. Unfortunately for Cassie, she attracts the attention of Azazeal, played by Michael with slicked-backed hair and a quiet, moody menace. He is the leader of fallen angels who call themselves Nephilim and who were kicked out of heaven for sleeping with mortal women. Azazeal declares his love for Cassie but secretly just wants a child by her so that it will be one more Nephilim in the mortal world.

Despite her misgivings, Cassie finds herself falling for the charismatic and handsome Azazeal and falls increasingly under his power, even after he kills Thelma who is thereafter seen as a ghost. As his hold over Cassie strengthens, she gives in to him and ultimately conceives his child. But after Thelma tells Cassie what the birth of the baby will mean, she tries to abort it. Cassie thinks she has successfully done so but the doctor who carried it out was influenced by Azazeal, and the baby, without her knowing, has been born and is being cared for by Azazeal – a son he names Malachi.

A second series followed in which a sexy new student, Ella, joins the school and seems to know about Cassie and
Azazeal. Her leather corsets are an instant hit with the boys, causing jealousy among the girls, but she is a lot older than she looks. In fact she's a 445-year-old witch who had been hunting Azazeal for centuries to prevent him from having a son by a mortal witch. But this time she's arrived too late and the only answer is to kill Malachi. Later in the series Cassie dies after she and Ella kidnap Malachi but are confronted by Azazeal. The focus is then on Ella's battle with her nemesis.