by Jim Maloney
A Radio 4 10-part serialisation of Dracula, which was broadcast in the late night Book at Bedtime slot between 24 November and 5 December 2003, was very popular with listeners. Michael narrated as Jonathan Harker – the English solicitor who visits the count at his castle and who becomes increasingly horrified by his host and finds it impossible to leave.
The Observer newspaper commented, ‘Michael Fassbender’s Jonathan Harker has the perfect voice for the part – slow to panic – with the result that we do his flapping for him. He soberly described the count crawling down the castle wall like a nightmare lizard. Worse was to follow, of course, starting with the ladies with red lips ready to swig blood. What a nightcap.’
The Times thought it scary enough to keep everyone at wake at night. ‘Who was it who decided that the best time to present a dramatised reading of Bram Stoker’s Dracula should be when any normal person should be looking for a bit of an assist into the arms of Morpheus rather than being wound up into a ball of fear?’ it commented, adding, ‘A fine cast (including James D’Arcy, Gillian Kearney and Michael Fassbender) gives it plenty of oompty. And consider this – if you tune in every night of the reading, you can stay awake for an entire working week!’
Another unusual job cropped up for Michael in November 2003, as the star of a music video for the British band The Cooper Temple Clause, for their song Blind Pilots. He played a man whose fiancé gives him a cowbell necklace to wear as he leaves home on his stag night out with his pals. She warns his friends to look after him but he goes from bad to worse the more he drinks. He starts to become aggressive and then grows horns and turns into a devil-like figure before ending the evening as a fully-fledged goat!
The next job that Michael took to help pay the bills was a TV commercial for Guinness. It seemed to be just another job and not a very dramatically satisfying one at that. But it was to have the most unexpected consequences as it turned him into an overnight star… in Ireland.
CHAPTER FOUR
AN ACTOR’S LIFE
The Guinness advert showed Michael playing a man, seen home alone in Dublin. On the spur of the moment he leaves the house and strides down to the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, where he dives in and swims, fully-clothed, across the Atlantic. Arriving in America, he walks with determination through New York and into a bar where he confronts a man drinking. The two stare at each other for a moment before the new arrival says, ‘Sorry.’ There’s a tense pause until they smile, embrace each other and enjoy a pint of Guinness together.
The advert, called The Quarrel, was first shown on 3 December 2003 and struck a real chord with the public. After years of acting in various TV dramas, it was this that made him a recognisable face in his homeland.
It was a particularly pleasant job for Michael because he also got to drink a fair bit of the famous product. ‘They want you to do as many takes as they can physically get out of you, so by the end I was pretty drunk!’ he told Irish chat-show host Ryan Tubridy on The Late Late Show. It also opened his eyes to what he thought just might be the best job in the world. ‘A guy travels around with them and he pours the perfect pint for the Guinness campaigns,’ he said. ‘And I thought, “What a brilliant job!” I thought I had a brilliant job but that’s pretty unique.’ Michael cheekily asked if they could give him ‘a Guinness credit card’ so that he could have free Guinness for the rest of his life but this was declined!
The thought of a swift rise to stardom after the false dawn that was Band of Brothers was now a thing of the past but acting work was steadily increasing and Michael, now 26, was becoming a ‘jobbing actor’. His next TV role was a high-profile one – that of Guy Fawkes in a BBC2 drama called Gunpowder, Treason and Plot, by the acclaimed writer Jimmy McGovern. The two-part story re-told the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the reign of King James I and saw Michael co-starring in a strong cast that included Robert Carlyle as King James, Emilia Fox, Tim McInnerny and Daniela Nardini.
Michael grew a beard and moustache for the role and enjoyed dressing up in a flowing white shirt and tight breeches, and riding a horse. The drama was filmed in Romania and, despite his impressive co-stars, he managed to draw praise from both the critics and the writer. The Sunday Times commented, ‘Mention should also be made of the devastatingly handsome Michael Fassbender as Guy Fawkes.’ The Observer said, ‘This is drama of the highest order,’ and the Daily Mirror called it ‘a fine drama brimming with passion, hell-fire and damnation’. And Jimmy McGovern, after watching Michael’s brooding, cold-hearted and ruthless portrayal of Fawkes, was perhaps the first to say, ‘He’s the next James Bond.’
Another strong role for Michael was a TV drama called Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder – The Case of Charles Bravo in 2004. The interesting pilot for a proposed series, it was such a success that more duly followed. The format had the Oscar-winning Gosford Park writer and Downton Abbey creator Fellowes introducing a famous real-life murder mystery, which was then dramatised, with Julian cropping up on screen from time to time to narrate details and to invite viewers to play detective and find out ‘whodunit’.
Michael played the title role of Charles Bravo, a newly married barrister who died from poisoning in April 1876 in an incident that scandalised Victorian society. It raked up a background of sex, intrigue and jealousy, and the newspapers had a field day. Bravo’s wife, Florence, was the wealthy daughter of an Australian millionaire and grew up in a magnificent stately home in Oxfordshire. At the age of 19, she married an MP’s son, Alexander Ricardo, and enjoyed a privileged lifestyle inside the coveted circle of high society. But Ricardo was a violent alcoholic who hit Florence. After he died suddenly in 1871, she inherited all he had and embarked on an affair with an eminent doctor, James Gully, who was 40 years her senior. During a house party in 1872, the host returned from a walk unexpectedly to find Florence and Gully having sex on the drawing-room sofa. The story quickly spread around London and Florence was finished in society. There was worse to come. She had fallen pregnant by Gully and he performed an abortion on her.
Desperate to reclaim some of her reputation, Florence lowered her sights to focus on an ambitious young barrister, Charles Bravo. He was beneath her in the social class rankings but was about as good as she could now get in husband material and he was attracted by her fortune as much as her prettiness. When she wanted to keep control of her capital, Bravo threatened not to marry her, so she agreed to give him part of her fortune. Bravo went through with the marriage, even though she had admitted her affair to him and her pregnancy by Gully. But later he became violent, making Florence’s life a misery and frightening her and her companion, Mrs Cox.
After Bravo’s death, an inquest found that he had been wilfully poisoned but there was insufficient evidence to fix the guilt on any person or persons. Despite the most exhaustive investigations at the time, no one was ever charged with his murder. Fellowes runs through suspects – Florence, Mrs Cox (who may have resented Bravo’s treatment of her mistress) and the equerry whom Bravo had fired for insolence and who had vowed to get revenge. At the end of the programme he gives his opinion on who he thinks did it while the audience is left to agree or disagree.
With a regular stream of increasingly good roles coming his way, Michael had the confidence to give up bar work again and become a full-time actor. It was a big moment and one that he appreciated and respected, having learned from the false dawn of Band of Brothers that success and stardom cannot be expected, even at the most promising of times.
In the summer of 2004 he flew out to Canada to star in a TV movie called A Bear Named Winnie. This charming tale centred on the origin of the Winnie the Pooh stories written by AA Milne and starred Stephen Fry as a zookeeper and David Suchet as an army general. Michael thoroughly enjoyed filming because he got to work with three adorable black bear cubs.
In the film he played Lt. Harry Colebourn of the Canadian Army Veterinary Corps who, on a whim, bought a bear cub from a hunter in Ontario in 1914
. The English-born Colebourn named her Winnie, after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg. Later, the bear accompanied him to England where he was posted to a militia cavalry regiment called The Fort Garry Horse. Here Winnie became an unofficial mascot of the regiment, with whom Colebourn worked as a veterinarian. When he was sent to France in 1914, he donated the bear to London Zoo. It was here that she became a big favourite with a young boy named Christopher Robin, who liked to visit the zoo with his father, Alan Alexander Milne. Christopher Robin even changed the name of his teddy bear, Edward Bear, to Winnie, and they became inseparable. AA Milne was charmed by the way his son talked and played with the bear and this inspired him to write his first Winnie the Pooh book in 1926. After the war, Colebourn planned to take Winnie back to Canada but when he saw how children were so enchanted by her, he changed his mind and she lived at London Zoo for 20 years.
Back home in Killarney, Josef and Adele were delighted that their son was making a go of his career and was now able to do it full time. He went back to visit them frequently and always over Christmas and the New Year if he wasn’t working.
Following the charm of A Bear Named Winnie, his next role could hardly have been in sharper contrast, as a psychotic serial killer with a foot fetish! It was in a BBC TV Sherlock Holmes drama in which Rupert Everett took on the role of the legendary sleuth in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, with Ian Hart as Dr Watson. The film, shown on Boxing Day 2004, was not written by Holmes’s creator, Conan Doyle, but was an original screenplay by scriptwriter Allan Cubitt.
The rather odd story had a sinister-looking Michael playing a character with a foot fetish who gets his kicks by strangling aristocratic young women with one of their own stockings and sticking the other one down their throat. Holmes investigates after the body of a 17-year-old girl fished out of the River Thames is found to be Lady Alice, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. When a previous victim of the same killer is identified as a ladies maid, Sarah O’Brien, Holmes suspects Charles Allen, the footman for the Duke and Duchess who formerly worked for the same aristocratic family as Sarah. Meanwhile, the daughter of Lord and Lady Massingham, Lady Georgina, is found dead, hanging from a lamppost in London with a stocking around her neck and another in her mouth.
Another young girl is attacked but survives to tell the tale and positively identifies Allen as her attacker when Holmes brings him in for questioning. This marks Michael’s first appearance in the film after almost an hour as the surly footman with a sinister sneer. To Holmes’s frustration, Allen’s fingerprints do not match those found on a bottle of brandy that the killer used to drug his victim with a sleeping draft. What’s more, Allen has a cast-iron alibi. On the day of the two most recent murders he attended the Duchess at two formal occasions where he was seen by hundreds of people. Holmes is convinced Allen is the killer, but how is he getting away with it? He later realises that the only possible solution is that Allen has an identical twin brother who is aiding him in his dastardly deeds.
So, despite his late entrance in the drama, Michael later gets double the exposure when Holmes and Watson fight the Allen twins, with Michael playing the dual roles. In playing the fetish fiend, Michael had some creepy scenes, kissing and caressing young women’s feet. Several critics thought the acting and photography was fine but that the plot fizzled out rather lamely. ‘Even if the surprise ending was something of a cop-out, it still managed to grip; and it was beautifully shot,’ said the Sunday Times.
‘On the whole it worked extremely well. The production was stylish, dark and atmospheric with a classic London pea-souper serving as a Dickensian metaphor for the moral murk beyond the brightly lit Edwardian interiors,’ commented The Times, while the Observer considered it to be ‘a real treat’.
The Daily Express was less impressed. ‘Unfortunately, the story – a brand new one, written by Allan Cubitt, about a deranged serial killer who abducted society debutantes – was full of ridiculous anachronisms and owed more to The Silence Of The Lambs than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,’ it said.
A pattern was forming in which Michael either played loveable, charming characters or nasty, evil ones. Casting directors seemed to think that his ability to appear brooding could be seen as either heroic or malicious and his distinctive wide grin as either sweet or sinister. It enabled him to play a variety of roles and the work came rolling in.
The popular ITV1 drama series William and Maryco-starred Martin Clunes and Julie Graham in the title roles as an undertaker and a midwife who become romantically involved. It was a warm-hearted drama that appealed to a Sunday-night TV audience. In the third episode of the third series Michael played a handsome Latvian chef named Lukasz, whose partner Rosie (Clara Salaman) is pregnant with his baby. With the birth imminent, Mary and her fellow midwife and best friend Doris (Claire Hackett) visit and Doris, who fancies Lukasz, is pleased to see him in a tight white vest. At first, Lukasz helps Rosie through her contractions by holding her hand but then he makes an excuse to go in the kitchen. Mary has a quiet word with him, persuading him to join Rosie in the home-birthing pool, and an excited Doris changes her seat to get a better view as he walks in and strips to his underpants! But after the baby is successfully delivered, he makes a play for Mary before walking out on Rosie.
Michael was to take on a far more devilish role in Sky One’s supernatural series Hex, which was generally regarded as Britain’s answer to the hugely successful US teen show, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Filmed to the same high-quality standards, it was shot on location at the magnificent Englefield House in Berkshire, which doubled as the fictitious English school, Medenham Hall, set on the site of an 18th-century scandal when the Medenham Witches were tried and executed.
When the rather shy Cassie (Christina Cole) enrols at the school, her latent telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities are awakened whenever she touches an antique vase that had been used in voodoo rituals by the Medenham witches. Her roommate, Thelma (Jemima Rooper), who has a crush on her, discovers that Cassie is a descendent of the witches. Unfortunately for Cassie, she attracts the attention of Azazeal, played by Michael with slicked-backed hair and a quiet, moody menace. He is the leader of fallen angels who call themselves Nephilim and who were kicked out of heaven for sleeping with mortal women. Azazeal declares his love for Cassie but secretly just wants a child by her so that it will be one more Nephilim in the mortal world.
Despite her misgivings, Cassie finds herself falling for the charismatic and handsome Azazeal and falls increasingly under his power, even after he kills Thelma who is thereafter seen as a ghost. As his hold over Cassie strengthens, she gives in to him and ultimately conceives his child. But after Thelma tells Cassie what the birth of the baby will mean, she tries to abort it. Cassie thinks she has successfully done so but the doctor who carried it out was influenced by Azazeal, and the baby, without her knowing, has been born and is being cared for by Azazeal – a son he names Malachi.
A second series followed in which a sexy new student, Ella, joins the school and seems to know about Cassie and Azazeal. Her leather corsets are an instant hit with the boys, causing jealousy among the girls, but she is a lot older than she looks. In fact she’s a 445-year-old witch who had been hunting Azazeal for centuries to prevent him from having a son by a mortal witch. But this time she’s arrived too late and the only answer is to kill Malachi. Later in the series Cassie dies after she and Ella kidnap Malachi but are confronted by Azazeal. The focus is then on Ella’s battle with her nemesis.
At his most threatening and frightening moment, Azazeal transforms into the demon creature that lurks beneath his handsome, mortal visage. This required Michael to spend six hours wearing a wetsuit while they made a latex mould of his body to turn him into the demon, and he sat patiently while make-up and prosthetics were applied to his face and body. Fortunately all the demon scenes in the series were shot in one day, so he didn’t have to keep enduring it.
Laura Pyper, who played Ella, is a fellow Irish actress from M
agherafelt in Co. Derry and she saw instantly how easy it was to come under Michael’s spell! ‘Michael’s a bit of a heart-throb,’ she told the Irish newspaper the Sunday Life. ‘He has this amazing quality where you turn a camera on him and he’s just to die for – full of charisma and very, very charming.’
For his part, Michael enjoyed the frequent snogging scenes with his pretty, blonde-haired co-star Christina Cole. ‘The more times I got to do that the better,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘Just, you know, it makes a happier environment to come to work to and you know that, if you can have a laugh while you’re doing creative stuff and you’re getting the work done as well, that’s great.’
The show was generally well received with the Sunday Times saying, ‘The punchy script and natty lesbian sidekick make this a promising start.’ The Sunday People said, ‘This stylish supernatural drama is a grown-up thrilling chiller. Forget Buffy, Bewitched and Charmed – this is not for those of us of a nervous disposition.’ But the Observer was less than impressed: ‘It would be easy to describe this rather predictable series as a British Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which would appeal to many, but this viewer was left with the feeling of having seen it all before.’
The month after Hex started showing on Sky One and began building up an impressive fan base, Michael began filming on the popular BBC1 cop drama Murphy’s Law, which starred James Nesbitt in the title role of undercover cop, DS Tommy Murphy. The third series focussed on one story which began with Murphy posing as a gun dealer who becomes deeper involved in crime when a buyer named Caz Miller, played by Michael, mentions that the gun is to be used for a hit. Murphy then goes undercover as a hitman and discovers that Miller works for well-known gangster Dave Callard (Mark Womack), who has been using his ill-gotten gains for legitimate enterprises and wants to kill an employee, Richard Holloway, who is supposedly sleeping with his wife.