by Jim Maloney
‘It went down really well. We had 114 people for the first night, then 140. We packed out the club.’ Michael wanted to hand over the door money to a charitable organisation but whenever he mentioned Reservoir Dogs he found people backing away, concerned about any association with a film notorious for its violence. In the end he gave the proceeds to some people trying to raise money for a little girl whose sight was impaired and needed an eye operation.
Putting on the production proved to be a wonderful learning experience about the various aspects of performance – acting, producing, directing and publicity. And it gave Michael confidence for the future. ‘I was totally naïve but I learned so much,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but I knew that with hard work and enthusiasm, things get done.’
Talking about the production on Radio Kerry he was asked how on earth he had managed to get the rights to put on Reservoir Dogs. A nervous Michael just grinned and replied, ‘Don’t mention that!’
When Michael told his parents that he wanted to act for a living they cautioned him to get a degree first but he insisted that he had to go for it straight away. He was supported by his grandmother, who also felt he should go for it. Not used to such clarity and forcefulness from their dreamer of a son, Josef and Adele eventually let him have his way.
After leaving St Brendan’s, Michael worked in his parents’ restaurant during the day and acted at night. Josef, who had given his son a strong work ethic, had always instilled in him the idea of ‘don’t do it unless you’re going to do it properly’ but he was not enamoured with his son’s choice of career and, more than once, told him to ‘get a proper job’.
Josef was worried about acting being such an unstable profession, in which the majority were unemployed and the fact that success depended as much on luck and whom you met as it did on talent. He also didn’t want his son to be heartbroken by failing to make it. But seeing that this was no passing phase, and admiring his drive and ambition, he gradually became more supportive. Josef was to later joke, after Michael had made it in Hollywood, that he was pleased his son hadn’t listened to him!
After leaving St Brendan’s Michael moved to Cork to study drama at the Coláiste Stiofain Naofa [College of Further Education] for a year before progressing, at the age of 19, to the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where he enrolled in a three-year course. But money was tight and it didn’t go a long way in London. ‘It took me a while to come to grips with how expensive London was,” Michael told the Hollywood Reporter. “My parents helped me out but we never had a lot of money. So it was very sticky the first three or four years between paying drama-school fees and surviving. The first place I lived was a studio I shared with a Brazilian girl. We weren’t seeing each other or anything but I remember there was a big hole in the window and it was so cold in the winter.’
Michael found work in a bar at Victoria Station that paid £3.29 an hour. He would do an 11-hour shift on a Saturday and work from 11am-4pm on a Sunday, but he was put on emergency income tax deductions until his correct tax code for the year could be worked out based on his income. This, he said, left him with something like £15 to take home. ‘It was a real struggle for the first three years and, to be honest, I don’t know how I did it.’
But although he admired and respected his drama teachers, it was not a happy experience for him at the school. He dropped out after two and a half years. ‘I’d had enough. You start off with thirty-two students and when I left there [were] eighteen or so remaining because people were getting kicked off or whatever. It was pretty harsh. And they didn’t think of movies as a pure art form like theatre acting, but it’s films that I love most. There’s an intimacy in movies – I wanted to have the same impact on others that movies had on me. So I got an agent and reckoned I had learned as much as I could. But it was a mistake, actually. Nobody knew who I was then for ages because I missed it when all the agents and casting directors came.’
But Michael’s naked ambition had its day – after a fashion – when, at the age of 21, he landed a television commercial for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). In this cheeky advert Michael plays a young man who wakes up in a strange bed and wonders where he is. Then he turns to see he is lying next to a naked girl and smiles smugly. In need of a drink, he walks downstairs naked, opens the fridge and takes out some milk. Viewers see his bare behind. Suddenly, the light comes on in the kitchen and Michael turns and, to his embarrassment, sees the girl’s mother staring at him. A message then comes up on the screen: ‘When you’d rather be somewhere else. Inexpensive flights for people under 26.’
Michael had to fight his shyness in having to strip off on screen. It was a daunting prospect for someone who had never been on television before, let alone naked. Despite Sweden’s reputation for being more at ease with nudity than many other countries, Michael had expected to be provided with some sort of covering for his private parts. ‘But they were like, “OK, when you’re ready Michael, drop your boxers and we’ll go for real this time.” So that was my first screen test and my first job.’
His next job was significantly more highbrow. In May 1999 he joined the Oxford Stage Company’s touring production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, playing second lieutenant Fedotik. It was an innovative production by the company’s talented artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole, which won good reviews. But then… nothing. The phone went quiet and Michael began to regret leaving drama school too early.
He got a job in a factory unloading boxes but the hours meant that he was unable to attend auditions – the lifeblood of the fledgling actor – so he quit that job to do bar work, which was far more flexible. But eight or nine worrying months went by with no acting work forthcoming. Things were looking grim and thoughts of returning home were recurring. Then, quite unexpectedly, he landed a job in what was to become one of the most respected TV series in history, helmed by Hollywood royalty Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
CHAPTER THREE
HOLLYWOOD AND BUST
The 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan was a huge hit and earned its director, Steven Spielberg, an Oscar and a nomination for its star Tom Hanks, as Captain John H. Miller, who leads a team of US soldiers in a search to rescue a paratrooper in Normandy, who is the last-surviving brother of four servicemen.
Hanks and Spielberg felt that they could do more in this territory with a TV series and after Hanks read Stephen E Ambrose’s true account of ‘Easy Company’ parachute infantry, he was sure he had found the right story. He and Spielberg approached the US TV company HBO with their idea for a 10-part TV series called Band of Brothers, which would follow a US paratrooper unit from their first day of training through to being dropped in Normandy on D-Day 1944 and their eventual capture of Hitler’s mountain eyrie at Berchtesgaden.
HBO were extremely keen on the idea, especially because the multi-Oscar-winning duo was behind it, and they backed the project with a hefty $120 million budget, making it the most expensive TV series ever produced. A large ensemble cast of young actors was required to play the soldiers and auditions opened in the US, UK and Australia. Not surprisingly, they attracted hundreds of hopefuls. Michael Fassbender was one of many who went along to audition in a damp basement in London’s Soho.
The casting agents at the various auditions were to gradually whittle down those who auditioned for them until they had the required number. Only then would they turn their minds to whom would play who. After having read a trial piece, Michael went back to working in a London bar and it was another month before he heard that he was wanted for a second audition. In the meantime, he had also auditioned for another high-profile role in another WWII adventure – the big-budget Hollywood movie, Pearl Harbor.
It told the story of childhood friends, Rafe and Danny, who grew up to become First Lieutenants in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Rafe meets and falls in love with a Navy nurse named Evelyn Johnson but has to leave her behind when he volunteers to serve with the RAF in England. After he is shot
down over the English Channel and presumed dead, Danny and Evelyn embark on a relationship. Rafe unexpectedly returns and confronts Danny at his base in Pearl Harbor but when the Japanese launch a surprise attack, the pair have other things on their mind.
It was the first film that Michael had auditioned for and he was sure which role he wanted – the starring one of Captain Rafe McCawley. But he lost out to an actor who was already a star, Ben Affleck, who was cast alongside Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale. The film, made by Jerry Bruckheimer, was distributed by Touchstone Pictures – the film label of the Walt Disney Group – and Michael has never forgotten how nice they were in rejecting him! ‘The Disney people were really sweet,’ he told the Hollywood Reporter. ‘They sent me a letter saying that they very much enjoyed the audition and what I did but unfortunately it wasn’t going to work out this time. I thought that was really nice of them. They didn’t have to do that. You get a lot of letters of rejection but it’s not very often you get a nice one that gives you a glow of pleasure!’
Shortly afterwards, to his amazement, he landed the role of Sergeant Pat Christenson in Band of Brothers. He was 24 and felt that he stood on the threshold of stardom. ‘I felt that this was it. Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t get bigger than this,’ he recalled. Michael’s friend who owned the London bar where he was working cautioned him that, although he was sure that he would do well as an actor, it might take him another five years. But Michael, with his head in the clouds, dismissed his words, telling him he was ‘on a roll here’ and that he didn’t want to hear such things.
The actors were sent to a British Army training centre at Longmoor Camp in Hertfordshire, in the hope of trying to turn them into realistic soldiers. Always one to enjoy physical activity, Michael enjoyed the running, hiking and assault courses. ‘After a couple of days the actors thought they were soldiers,’ he told the New YorkTimes. ‘But then we looked across at some real soldiers training a hundred yards away and everyone became an actor again pretty quickly!’
In a largely unknown cast, British actor Damian Lewis was surprised to find himself cast in the lead role of Major Richard Winters and fellow Brit, Dexter Fletcher, played Staff Sergeant John Martin. The few well-known names included Donnie Wahlberg as Second Lieutenant C. Carwood Lipton and David Schwimmer as Captain Herbert Sopel, who puts the rookie soldiers through their arduous training in the first three episodes.
Band of Brothers was shot over eight to ten months at the Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, England, where Saving Private Ryan had been filmed. Here various sets were constructed to portray 12 different European towns. The picturesque village of Hambleden, in Buckinghamshire, was used for the early scenes where the company are training in England, and other scenes set in Germany and Austria were shot in Switzerland.
The young male cast of ambitious actors, herded together in an exciting and big new television drama and playing soldiers, created a bond between themselves. There were many laughs during training and most of them, including Michael, couldn’t believe their luck. They felt like overgrown children playing a game for which they were being handsomely paid. Michael felt that his days working behind a bar were firmly in the past.
He got on well with Donnie Walhlberg, who paid him a compliment after Michael did a small scene. Donnie approached him and said, ‘Well done in that scene. That could’ve ended up on the cutting room floor and you handled it well.’ He then gave Michael some advice he has remembered ever since: ‘Just remember the three Ps – patience, perseverance, practice.’ Michael appreciated Donnie’s words, considering them to be ‘a nice bit of encouragement’.
Michael also got to know the Scottish actor James McAvoy, who had a role as Private James Miller. Initially James had thought that Michael was American but after hearing his Irish accent he introduced himself. Michael recalls being impressed by the confidence that James had and liked his sense of mischievousness.
Band of Brothers proved to be a huge hit, winning an Emmy and Golden Globe for best mini-series. On the back of its success, several of the cast – now good friends from the months they had worked together – headed for Los Angeles, where they felt that fame and fortune were waiting for them. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way. They found themselves competing against each other for the same type of roles, along with many other rising stars. They had been let into Wonderland but once filming had wrapped, they were outside once more, having to knock on doors to be let back in. Although Michael met and had talks with key players in the film world, he failed to get any acting work in the three months he was there.
When the money he had made dried up, he turned to bar work once more, this time in LA, and also got a job unloading trucks at night. But this left him tired when he needed to be fresh during the day for attending auditions. It was Josef who persuaded him to give up the unloading job so that he could get some more sleep.
Michael had thought he had hit the big time with Band of Brothers but in LA he realised just how tough the auditioning process was among so many actors, many of whom were far more confident than him. ‘I was auditioning for television roles but I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated,’ he admitted. ‘I felt very embarrassed and eventually went back to London with my tail between my legs.’ He returned to working at the same bar, with his friend’s earlier warning that it might take five years before he really made it ringing in his ears.
‘Band of Brothers was an incredible thing to be a part of,’ he said, ‘but the experience taught me a lesson, to never think you’re flying. Once the money had gone, I went back to working behind a bar. It also taught me to keep an eye on your finances because you never know what’s around the corner.’
Michael decided that he wouldn’t go back to LA until he could sustain a proper acting career. And that was to take longer than he thought. As the months went by without any acting work, turning into a year, his anxiety rose incrementally. He had to think about giving it up and forging another career but the only thing he knew about was catering, so he thought about opening his own bar or returning to Killarney to run his parents restaurant. ‘I thought, “Shit, if this [acting] doesn’t work, what am I going to do?” I didn’t go to university so I don’t have anything academic to fall back on. But I do know the world of catering so maybe there was something I could do there.’
For a while he got part-time work doing market research whereby he had to telephone people who had filed complaints about the Royal Mail to see if they were satisfied with how their grievances were dealt with. ‘Most of the time they weren’t,’ he remembered. ‘We would do various things to keep our brains from freezing, like trying to stick the words Mary Poppins or another phrase into the conversation.’
Some acting work did begin to come his way but it was sparse and he was later to realise that he probably seemed too desperate during auditions. ‘I made a balls of so many auditions. Lost so many jobs.’ The constant rejection was ‘killing his spirit’ but he remembered Donnie Wahlberg’s encouragement and advice and tried to convince himself that he would succeed. ‘My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, “I’m good enough.” That became my mantra.’
Bit parts in several British TV drama series followed, including the ITV drama series Hearts and Bones, which focused on the lives and loves of a group of female friends who had moved to London from Coventry. Michael appeared in three episodes as a German motorcycle courier, named Hermann, who embarks on a relationship with one of the women, Sinead, played by Rose Keegan. It was good casting because it utilised his knowledge of the German accent and his love of motorbikes as well as his good looks.
Among his other parts was that of a character named Jack Silver in the BBC’s stylish cop drama NCS Manhunt, starring David Suchet, which was based on the National Crime Squad. But a guest role as a patient named Christian Connolly in the BBC hospital drama series Holby City – in a 2002 episode called Ghosts – was a miserable experience. ‘They were taking
my spleen out and I fell asleep,’ he remembered. ‘I was lying on that bed for six hours. I remember waking up midway through the take and the director saying to the cameraman, “Oh, we’ll have better guest actors in the next episode.” I thought that was awful. The conveyor belt-ness of it was pretty soul-destroying as it was, without hearing that from the director.’
In the ITV1 one-off drama thriller Carla, he had a small role as a man on holiday on a beautiful Greek island, where he catches the eye of two fellow holidaymakers Helen and Carla (Lesley Sharpe and Helen McCrory). Based on the novel Improvising Carla by Joanna Hines, the story follows quiet Helen North who arrives on the island, having recently split from her boyfriend, hoping for some peace and quiet during her two-week holiday alone. But then she meets the charismatic Carla whose infectious sense of fun proves irresistible. An intense bond grows between them as they open up to each other about their lives and secrets and fantasies. When they pick up two young men – Rob, played by Michael, and Matt (Henry Ian Cusick) – sexual jealousy rears its head and the trust between the two friends is irrevocably damaged. Carla, it transpires, is not as fun loving and easygoing as she appears. A vicious fight ends with a tragic accident and Helen returns home, shocked and frightened, her dream holiday having turned into a nightmare.
The Times described it as ‘Thelma and Louise with an undertow of Fatal Attraction’. The general view is that it looked nice – it was filmed on the lovely Greek island of Kythira – and was well acted but that the plot twisted and turned too much and was ultimately unbelievable. ‘The scenery was lovely to look at and the two main characters were superbly cast but there were times when watching olives grow would have been a better way of spending an evening,’ said the Daily Express. ‘Like so many “psychological” thrillers, this one promised more than it delivered,’ asserted the Daily Mail.