Super Friends: Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy
The actors are much more than costars—they're kindred spirits who run and race, and sometimes rage, together. The duo on their latest onscreen reunion in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Shakespeare, snogging Angelina, and the meaning of true bromance.
[SIZE=+1]TRUTH, LIES, AND PRESS JUNKETS[/SIZE]
Michael Fassbender: At some point everybody—well, not everybody, but a vast majority—has felt displaced for one reason or another. Going to high school, some people have glasses, other people have certain religious beliefs or sexual orientation. For whatever reason, they feel ostracized. I think the great thing about the X-Men
series is that people everywhere can relate to it.
Fassbender sips from his pint of Sussex Bitter Ale as his close friend and costar James McAvoy takes over the job of explaining the appeal of their new $200 million–plus film,
X-Men: Days of Future Past—both for audiences and for these two accomplished actors. It's early still at the Lord Stanley in North London, but in true pub-sermonizing fashion, McAvoy becomes instantly animated.
James McAvoy: People have been asking me a lot, "Why have superhero movies become so popular recently?" And they go, "Is it because they've become really serious and blah, blah?" I'm like, "No, it's not." For thousands and thousands and thousands of years, we've been telling stories about superheroes. Norse gods, mythical ****in' Greek gods, Roman gods—Hercules? It sounds like ****in' Wolverine, you know what I mean? We have been telling stories about superheroes and super-villains forever. This isn't some new thing that we now do and sell out for.
MF: That was good. [Claps]
I'm in admiration.
JM: I just spent yesterday junketing.
MF: I missed out.
JM: By the end of junketing, you've got some really good bullet points.
MF: It sharpens the spear.
JM: It really does.
DETAILS: Mind giving us another bullet point?
JM: I've been watching X-Men
cartoons since I was 14. I'm a huge fan. And that is true, but it's also something I said about 4 million ****ing times yesterday.
MF: I get pissed off at myself because you're like, "God, I've said that so many times now," and you start to feel like you're insincere. But actually, you're just looking for a truthful answer. There's nothing devious or preconceived—for me, anyway.
JM: The only time that I am dishonest . . . when I make **** up or when I deflect . . . is when I'm being asked something that is—
MF: About somebody you don't like?
JM: Totally. Then I'm a lying bastard. I'm like, "Michael, he's one of the finest."
MF: He's like, "He's such a good
guy."
• • •
[SIZE=+1]first-class friends[/SIZE]
If life were as poetic as they would like it to be, McAvoy and Fassbender would have bonded while making
Band of Brothers back in 2000, playing fresh-faced G.I.'s in the Tom Hanks–Steven Spielberg HBO series, but they didn't shoot any scenes together. Instead, their bromance blossomed a decade later, in the walk-up to 2011's
X-Men: First Class, by which time they had developed lengthy résumés and mutual respect. "Before Michael and I even met, I was already willing to go with him and be open to him, because I was like, 'This guy's ****in' brilliant,'" McAvoy says. "Not to be too ****in' up your *** or anything like that, but the thing that elevated
First Class for me was working with you."
"I had had admiration from a distance," Fassbender says, adding that the connection crystallized during the audition process. McAvoy, who was director Matthew Vaughn's first choice to play Charles Xavier, tested with all the actors up for the part of Erik Lehnsherr, a.k.a. Magneto, in an effort to find the perfect chemistry. "James came in to do the screen test with me," Fassbender says, "and from there, there was a respect and a friendliness between us. But then as it developed, there was more trust, and you realize that the other person's got your back. Then the trust becomes deeper and it goes somewhere else, for sure."
It progressed from giving each other notes to writing and rewriting lines for each other to what McAvoy calls "a relationship that was comfortable, honest, and allowed us to be able to be vulnerable in front of each other as friends and ask, 'What the **** do you think about this?'" Not surprisingly, it's the fraternal relationship between McAvoy and Fassbender—Charles and Erik—that helped make the film a sleeper blockbuster, taking in more than $350 million worldwide.
As deep and abiding as it is, the friendship is defined by the differences in their lives in a way familiar to many men in their thirties. One is settled down, with a wife and a child, ensconced in a quiet neighborhood (sleepy Crouch End, where McAvoy lives with his wife of eight years, Anne-Marie Duff, and their son, who turns 4 in June). The other is still in the messy bachelor pad he's had for years (Fassbender's been meaning to spruce up his apartment in an edgy corner of Hackney ever since he moved there in his twenties). Both have demanding jobs. So they text, send each other videos, and are thick as thieves when working, as they were while filming
X-Men: Days of Future Past in Montreal. And off set—let's just say that their outings still feel like something of an occasion.
Hence the pints, hence the pub—the Lord Stanley. Tucked away in the boho borough of Camden, the airy gastropub splits the distance, geographically and otherwise, between the two friends.
There's another thing that makes this afternoon drink-up special: It's Fassbender's birthday, his 37th. While he is going out to dinner later this evening, he plans to take it easy. He doesn't always, as suggested by the tabloid reports of him carousing with a supermodel at a club the night before. He alternates sips of Vita Coco with his first round, which comes courtesy of his good mate.
"It's not a contrivance at all. I love the guy," McAvoy says, turning to Fassbender. "I do mourn your absence sometimes when I'm working with lesser dudes.
• • •
[SIZE=+1]nomination, frustration, urination[/SIZE]
MF: My God, man. I'm nervous.
JM: You'll be fine.
MF: You'll be like, "Oh, you ****ed it!"
JM: I'll phone you up: "Remember I told you I was really excited? Aww, dude . . ."
The two friends wait for me to ferry over the next round of pints. And as the bitter begins to flow, so does talk of Fassbender's recently wrapped big-screen adaptation of
Macbeth. He and McAvoy compare notes on the interpretation of several lines, the delivery of Shakespeare's verse, and the demands of the Bard's darkest play. McAvoy played the lead in a grueling stage production of
Macbeth on London's West End last year and was nominated for an Olivier Award, Britain's equivalent of a Tony.
JM: Yeah, didn't ****in' win it, though.
MF: Shoulda won it, shouldn't you?
JM: Didn't ****in' win it, did I? Lost it.
MF: Yeah, yeah. Easy, easy.
JM: I'm not bitter, I'm not bitter—
MF: Just angry.
JM: I'm drinking bitter. It's just really ****in' annoying. No, I'm only joking.
MF: Oh, no you weren't.
JM: No, listen. It's not about winning awards, and I really don't give a **** about awards when I do a job. But if you're sitting in the room, I'd much rather they called my name out than the next guy. Of course I would. It's not like you're Mother Teresa and you're like, "No, I really want everyone else to win."
MF: We're all winners, we're all winners. Goddamn it, we are!
McAvoy pats his friend on the back as he gets up and makes for the bathroom. After a six-month-long Oscar campaign for his role as a troubled sex addict in
Shame, Fassbender showed a candor rarely seen in the For Your Consideration crowd, saying he was disappointed about not getting a nomination and suggesting he was done campaigning—comments that were interpreted, by some, as a dig at those who did lobby the academy.
MF: It takes five to six months to go and do a campaign, and that's fine, but I would prefer to make the movie and tell another story. And that's all I meant by that. It's not like, "Oh God, this is a drag and I can't be bothered with this." It's not that at all, and I don't want to take away from anybody who does it, because that's not what I meant. Basically, what I'm saying is, I think we live in such a politically correct time at the moment. It almost feels like the fifties again. People are so quick to judge and pick on something that you say. The fact of the matter is, of course it affects you—because of course everybody likes approval, that's just human nature—so you'd be lying to say it doesn't. Like James said, it's nice to hear your name called out.
DETAILS: So was it validating to be up there this year, alongside director
Steve McQueen, for
12 Years a Slave?
MF: Absolutely. Like I said, it's always nice to get approval from your peers. I think everybody wants that in life, to be sort of . . . acknowledged
is not the right word—celebrated, if that's what it is. You try and tell a story and it touches people.
DETAILS: In that moment, as the envelope was opened for Best Supporting Actor, did you feel anxious or nervous?
MF: I didn't feel that at the Oscars. I just felt it was a very cool, chill, relaxed atmosphere. I knew what the result was gonna be, so maybe that was why.
DETAILS: So you predicted
Jared Leto would win, but what about
12 Years? And Lupita Nyong'o getting Best Supporting Actress?
MF: I actually had predicted the way it went. I thought it would get best film. And I did sort of call the Lupita thing. I was pretty sure she'd get it, and I was so happy she did.
DETAILS: She gave you an amazing shout-out in her speech—she called you her rock.
MF: And I wasn't there!
DETAILS: What were you doing?
MF: I went outside to go to the toilet.
DETAILS: So you were taking a piss?
MF: Yes. I was taking a piss. And I did have a sneaky vodka tonic. But I got totally caught out, because I was thinking that category was going to be way down the line. And then, of course, you can't get back in until it's a commercial break, so I watched it backstage. I felt pretty embarrassed about that.
With perfect timing, at this moment McAvoy returns from taking a piss.
JM: Where was this?
MF: The Oscars—I missed Lupita winning. So there's a stand-in beside my mom. [Laughs]
And Brad Pitt said he could hear them going, "Michael Fassbender? Where's Michael Fassbender?" Bad timing on my part.
• • •
[SIZE=+1]faint praise[/SIZE]
MF: It was really bad. It was close here and frizzy up here. And then, because I tied it back, whenever I took the band off, it just went like this—poof—mullet. Really bad. Lucky enough, I managed to have a girlfriend. I don't know how—'cause I was really pimply as well.
This portrait of an artist as a young metalhead both is and is not a passing snapshot. Fassbender will still psych himself up on set with AC/DC, Slayer, or Megadeth on occasion, and growing up in Killarney, Ireland, he harbored rock-star aspirations. "I've gotta say, I wasn't very good. It was just two of us, both on lead guitar, and both of us singing—nobody wanted to back down," he recalls. "We couldn't get a bass player, and we couldn't get a drummer. It was a small town." The shift happened when he and a friend produced a stage version of
Reservoir Dogs, in which Fassbender played Mr. Pink. (When Fassbender told Quentin Tarantino, who directed him in
Inglourious Basterds, Fassbender says, "he got a kick out of it. I stressed to him it was for charity—we weren't profiting off his work!") As a teen, Fassbender waited tables at a restaurant run by his mother, who was born in Northern Ireland, and his German father, who was the chef—though he preferred tending bar. "I'm a little bit too proud," he says. "You're at the mercy of the floor when you're a waiter, whereas behind the bar, it's your domain. You've gotta wait for the bartender to come and serve you."
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