Michael Fassbender rose to fame through his collaborations with director Steve McQueen, starring in Shame, Hunger and 12 Years a Slave - since then he’s cemented a reputation as one of cinema’s most magnetic performers, even when he’s not playing Magneto from the X-Men. Now he stars in Steven Soderbergh’s cool spy caper Black Bag - if that’s tempted you to delve into the Fassbender back catalogue, here are the 10 films you need to seek out first, along with exactly where to stream them.
12 Years a Slave
Fassbender’s chilling portrayal of morally bankrupt plantation owner Edwin Epps is the dark heart of director Steve McQueen’s masterful historical drama, which sets out the true story of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an accomplished African-American man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. 12 Years a Slave unflinchingly depicts the horrors of the slave trade, many of them embodied by Epps, the cruellest of Northup’s “owners” - miraculously, though, Fassbender achieves a nuanced portrayal of a dangerously stupid man who cannot control or understand his raging emotion, causing him to become lost in abject cruelty. Ejiofor is the star, but Fassbender helps elevate the film to the level of a classic.
Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino’s audacious alternate-history World War II romp is an unsettling blend of extremely dark humour, unbearable tension and explosive action, as it follows the efforts of undercover agents to kill as many Nazis as possible behind enemy lines. Fassbender, who has cited Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction as major influences on his acting, isn’t one of the leads but is at the centre of one of the film’s most memorable scenes, which fans know by the shorthand “the German three”. Fassbender’s character, plummy Brit Lieutenant Archie Hicox, is in a bar full of Nazis, trying to pass himself off as German. But then he makes one small but crucial mistake…
Shame
The second of Fassbender’s collaborations with Steve McQueen is a raw, at times almost unbearably intimate exploration of addiction and self-loathing loneliness: Fassbender takes full responsibility for the success or failure of the project as Brandon, a man living with sex addiction in an unfeeling, disconnected New York City. Often using Fassbender’s expressions and physicality where other movies would utilise dialogue, Shame’s study of sex addiction, rather than the more familiar cinematic vices like drugs or alcohol, makes it a particularly powerful portrait of how addiction cuts those suffering from it off from their loved ones and their real self. It needs whole-hearted bravery from its lead actor, and gets it.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The fifth and, arguably, best instalment in the X-Men cinematic franchise, Days of Future Past is however one that might baffle non-devotees if they come to it cold: it’s exciting for fans because it features the older version of the main cast, including Ian McKellen as Magneto, and the younger group, with Fassbender in the same role as Magneto aka Erik Lensherr. Set in an alternate 1970s where the mutant heroes are trying to avert the dystopian alternate 2023 in which the movie opens, there are stunning set pieces aplenty and a good helping of sly humour, with a typically passionate Fassbender driving much of the action.
Prometheus
Film number five in the Alien franchise is directed by Ridley Scott, who helmed the original Alien, and is a prequel of sorts, taking place before the events of that movie and in the same universe. In the late 21st Century, a human space crew looks for clues about the species’ origins, but instead is confronted with a threat that might eliminate humanity altogether. David, the ship’s android maintenance man, is a textbook Fassbender role: as an AI that is, disturbingly, capable of emotions such as jealousy and obsession, the actor uses the character of a robot to further explore what it is to be human.
Steve Jobs
In a film with a lot more pedigree than its so-so box-office performance would suggest - it is directed by Danny Boyle and written by West Wing supremo Aaron Sorkin - Michael Fassbender takes the titular role of the Apple co-founder, exploring Jobs’ business genius, his limitless ambition, and his deep personal flaws. Intense and intricate beneath its elegant surface - rather like an Apple gadget - the movie demands a wordier performance than Fassbender is generally known for, but he is equal to the challenge, nailing Jobs’s charisma and vulnerability. Those who knew Jobs say Fassbender fails to look or sound like him, but that doesn’t matter: his Steve is an alluring character in his own right.
X-Men: First Class
Number four in the main run of X-Men movies successfully reboots the franchise by switching to prequels, with Fassbender as a younger version of Erik Lensherr/Magneto, previously played by Ian McKellen. Fassbender is the ideal fit, tapping into the pain and rage of a character who is driven by feelings of outsiderdom: as Fassbender himself summarised it, “The core of it is, Magneto just needs a hug!” We begin in Auschwitz in 1944, where the young Erik’s ability to manipulate metal cannot save his mother from being murdered; in the 1960s, his efforts to find the man responsible bring him into contact with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and what will become the X-Men.
Hunger
Fassbender’s breakout role is as Bobby Sands, the IRA member who, in 1981, leads a hunger strike in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison, aimed at regaining the inmates’ political prisoner status. Deeply harrowing and unforgettably visceral, the film - the debut of director Steve McQueen, who would go on to employ Fassbender in Shame and 12 Years a Slave - includes a famous unbroken 17-minute scene during which the camera does not move, and which legend has it was completed in just five takes. Stark and authentic, Hunger heralded an actor who was likely to commit to his roles far beyond the norm: to play the starving protestor, Fassbender slimmed down by following a gruelling low-calorie, high-exercise schedule prior to shooting.
Macbeth
More a critical hit than a box-office success, Justin Kurzel’s fairly faithful version of the Shakespeare tragedy - it swaps out the witchcraft for extra bloody battle scenes, complete with slow-motion sequences lingering on spilled blood - casts Fassbender in the title role, and in the part of Macbeth the actor finds many of the qualities that recur in his film roles. As Macbeth’s ambition, or that of his wife (Marion Cotillard), or his fate, or a combination of all three push him further and further down into violent paranoia and despair, Fassbender combines intensity and restraint to create the sort of intimacy between performer and audience that the viewer isn’t fully comfortable with, but which keeps us firmly gripped.
A Dangerous Method
A film examining the complex relationship between pioneers of psychiatry Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), as well as their interactions with Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who begins the movie as a patient suffering from hysteria but then becomes Jung’s scientific assistant and, somewhat troublingly, his lover, just as Jung and Freud’s professional relationship begins. Not for the first time, Fassbender is a man bewitched and tormented by his own transgressions - whether he’s sharing a scene with Mortensen or with Knightley, there’s an addictive tension in that room.
Where to watch the best Michael Fassbender movies streaming online
Scroll down to find out where to stream the best Michael Fassbender movies online using popular services like Netflix, Prime Video and more!
