One of Ireland's greatest film actors: Who is Michael Fassbender?

Michael Fassbender, born April 2, 1977, is a German-Irish actor and producer. Fassbender's first on-screen role was as Burton "Pat" Christenson in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's award-winning miniseries Band of Brothers.

He played the character of Azazeal in two series of the TV series Hex, broadcast on Sky One. He played the main character in the video for the song Blind Pilots by the British band The Cooper Temple Clause. In early 2004, he starred in The Quarrel, a television commercial for Guinness (beer brand), in which he played a man who starts swimming from Ireland and tries to reach New York. The commercial won the gold medal at the FAB Awards in 2005.

Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is an Irish actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. In 2020, he was listed at number nine on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors. Fassbender was born in Heidelberg, West Germany, on 2 April 1977, the son of an Irish mother Adele (from Larne) and German father Josef Fassbender. He has an older sister named Catherine, who is a neuropsychologist at the MIND Institute in Sacramento, California. According to lore on his mother's side of family, his mother is the great-grandniece of Michael Collins, an Irish leader during the War of Independence.

In 2006, he played the role of Stelios, a young Spartan warrior, in the film 300 Spartans directed by Zack Snyder, the film was a commercial success. To prepare for his role as Irish Army prisoner Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's 2008 film The Hunger, he went on a diet that would make him lose 600 calories a day. He won the British Independent Film Award for his performance in The Hunger. He then starred in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, where he played Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a British officer. Afterward, Fassbender became known and accepted by Hollywood and the audience.

Fassbender played Magneto in 1962's X-Men: First Class, the sequel to Marvel's X-Men series about the friendship between Charles Xavier and Magneto. The film was released on June 3, 2011 and was a huge success worldwide, establishing Fassbender as a global movie star. Fassbender also appeared in the movie Shame as a man in his 30s struggling with sex addiction. With this film, he reunited with director Steve McQueen. With this role, he won the Volpi Cup Best Actor Award at the Venice International Film Festival.