The email arrives suddenly, naming the location «Downtown photo  studio, 6th Street and the Los Angeles River, made infamous by the Red  Hot Chili Peppers’ song Under the Bridge» and time of the photo shoot. I  pick him up at the Sunset Marquis and he looks tall, trim and elegant  in simple jeans and t-shirt. His first words: “Do you have a cigarette?  No? Please find me one”. We begin the ride charged with testosterone,  real men, totally unconcerned with being politically correct, armed with  cigarettes, whisky and club soda, talking about football, cars and his  recent motorcycle trip. “I’m a Liverpool fan and You’ll Never Walk Alone  is the best anthem in the world. The Reds have been my team since I was  five. I played as a right winger, I was fact and a pretty decent  dribbler, my left foot was crap, zero technique. I never could have gone  professional. Viggo Mortensen, a great friend of mine, plays really  well. He supports the Argentine side San Lorenzo and adores Messi”. The  34-year-old actor looks out the window, not minding the frustrating  Hollywood traffic. “I’ve always loved cars, especially classics like the  speedster, roadster and spyder models of the Porsche 550. At 4 years  old I was already itching for my driver’s license, at 7 I was driving  tractors and at 12 my father’s car. I have to admit that my love of  motorcycles came later, though it overtook me with total, devastating  intensity. I’ve just returned from a 6,000 kilometer trip with my  father. He rode a Triumph Tiger and I was on my trusty BMW GS. We  started from London and crossed Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia,  Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro, then took a ferry to Taormina and did  the whole Amalfi coast. I was surprised because in Italy you leave space  for motorcycles on the road. You drive a bit fast but you’re cool, you  share the road, not like here in America where they’d just as soon run  you over”.
Fassbender never stops smoking, one after the  other, nor does he stop smiling when I ask if his love of speed is one  of the most immediate ways to feel free. “An excellent match, freedom  and power. Horses and horsepower. Riding a horse at a full gallop is  exhilarating, but a motorcycle lets you go where you want. You’re not  closed in a box, everything around you is alive, the trees, the  mountains, the sea. You’re in tune, you’re one with your surroundings  and your machine, enjoying all five senses like you’ve never experienced  in your life. For the trip with my father, I had two saddlebags for a  wardrobe stripped down to the basics – two pairs of jeans, two pairs of  shoes, flip-flops and a few t-shirts”. If he hadn’t become an actor,  Michael would have opened a bar-trattoria, like his parents who for  years ran a restaurant in Killarney, Ireland. “I’ve had some rough  moments as an actor, though I’ve always had the support of my family. I  lost a lot of gigs because I seemed desperate at the auditions. When  you’re not working, you totally lose your self-esteem. It’s a  frustrating trade if it doesn’t go your way. I have to thank my father,  who always pushed me to do more; he was never satisfied with my  achievements. Thanks to him I learned two very useful things for this  kind of work: German, and discipline. I’ll always be grateful to  François Ozon, who gave me my first starring role «in Angel, ed.«. He  believed in me, and thanks to him I can now do what I’ve always dreamed  of. Then came Steve McQueen, first with Hunger and then with Shame «not  forgetting Tarantino with Lieutenant Hicox in Inglourious Basterds,  ed.«. Working with Steve is always a unique experience because he  doesn’t play by any book of rules about how a film should be made”. 
With  Shame Fassbender won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival as Best  Actor, while in the States the film has an NC-17 rating.  “I don’t  understand the problem with the nudity in the film. What’s the  difference between male and female nudity? All men have penises, all  women have sex, both accept masturbation as a natural need, yet despite  all this people are scandalized by sex, while violence is accepted no  problem. What are the criteria of judgment here? Is it possible that we  can’t do anything to challenge this censorship? The real problem of the  main character in Shame isn’t his obsession with sex, but rather his  dependency on a certain mental scheme, an addiction that damages his own  life as well as those of the people around him. Sex is a primitive  instinct, an often amazing physical experience. Falling in love is  something else entirely – you establish a deeper and more complex  connection with the other person. Sex can be a thousand things: serious,  playful, strange, thrilling. Having sex on the set is stressful,  because you need to establish rules and limits. I generally ask my  partner if I can kiss her, or caress her back, breasts, crotch, in order  to understand how far I can push things without looking like a maniac.  On the screen, female nudity is not only accepted but encouraged. My  mother complains that men always have their pants on”. He hears a  song on the radio and hums along, then talks about the important role  that music has played in his life. “It was my dream. I started acting at  age 17 because I realized I would have failed as a musician. My  favorite band back then was Nirvana, now I listen to a bit of everything  – blues, country, rock and hip-hop, especially from the ’90s: 2Pac,  Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Public Enemy, Jay-Z. One of the most  interesting musicians of the moment, and I would dare say of all time,  is Jack White. I also love Muddy Waters, Tom Waits, The Chieftains”.
His  love of film was inherited from his mother, Adele. “She’s a fan of the  American school of the ’60s and ’70s – Coppola, Lumet, Scorsese,  Cassavetes, Kazan, Brando, Montgomery Clift and obviously Paul Newman,  although her favorite director is Rainer Fassbinder, perhaps because of  the stories my father tells about an alleged family relation. My hero as  a kid was Chevy Chase. I loved The Six-Million-Dollar Man, Superman and  will always have Kim Basinger in 9 ½ Weeks burned into my memory. Still  chatting, we arrive at the Downtown photo studio, where  I continue  my interrogation, moving from his favorite part of his wardrobe – “I  love scarves and hats – my grandfather’s cap is still my most prized  accessory, I always bring it with me” – to the place he keeps the  plaques and statues of the 16 international awards he’s won «including  the British Independent Film Award, Irish Film and Television Award, the  Volpi Cup, the Screen Actors Guild Award». “I keep them at home, in the  bathroom. That way when I sit on the toilet I can contemplate them.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s really great receiving awards, an honor. But I  try not to live in the past, preferring to think about the future, what  I’ll do next”.
In the end we talk about exactly  that: Prometheus, the prequel to Alien, directed by Ridley Scott; Twelve  Years a Slave with Brad Pitt, once again with Steve McQueen; At  Swim-Two-Birds, directed by his friend Brendan Gleeson, who stars along  with Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy. The first to hit the theaters  will be Haywire by Soderbergh, co-starring Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum  and Mathieu Kassovitz. He says goodbye reminding me of the motto of  Eric Cantona – his second-favorite footballer – who refuses to keep any  memorabilia around because he finds it sad to be mired in memories:  “Move forward”, he says.