Michael Fassbender has been killing it in films like “12 Years a Slave” and “Inglourious Basterds,” and is poised to continue his successful acting streak with “Macbeth” and “Steve Jobs” — however, the beginning of his acting career wasn’t such smooth sailing.
In a cover story for the September 13 issue of T Magazine, New York Times’ style magazine, Fassbender said he was turned away by two drama schools before trying out for the Drama Centre in London.
By the time he was 30, he still hadn’t broken out — that is, until he auditioned for the role of I.R.A leader Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen‘s “Hunger.” It took two auditions before McQueen cast him in the film, which went on to win major awards.
The now 38-year-old has come a long way since drama school, and will appear on screen as Steve Jobs in Universal’s “Steve Jobs” on Oct. 16. The biopic of the late Apple CEO is so highly anticipated that Fassbender said he can’t even go to the Apple store in New York because its walls are adorned with thousands of posters bearing his face.
Here are seven other revelations about Fassbender from T, The New York Times Style Magazine’s interview:
1. He passed out on the set of “12 Years a Slave” from the intensity of his rape scene with Lupita Nyong’o‘s character.
2. At the shooting range he has almost perfect accuracy.
3. When he took a six-week holiday in 2011 with his father and stopped at a film festival in Sarajevo, the mayor of Dubrovnik offered Fassbender a captained boat for a week, so his mother joined and they had a family sailing trip instead.
4. As an April Fool’s joke, he had his driver call his parents to tell them their son was in jail and needed $10,000 bail.
5. Fassbender is playing the cursed king in “Macbeth,” and says he doesn’t believe in prophecies, signs and superstitions, except for one: “Whenever I see a solitary magpie, I salute.”
6. His lucky number might be 7: He was born in 1977, and scored his “Hunger” role in 2007.
7. Fassbender spent most of 20s bartending: “I enjoyed the bar, but God, I really, really wanted to act.”
See TheWrap’s exclusive photo below from Fassbender’s cover issue of T, The New York Times Style Magazine, which hits stands on Sunday, Sept. 13. And you can read the complete interview at the magazine’s website.