by Jim Maloney
The Observer called the final episode, in which Callard, Miller and Murphy go into hiding, ‘a grand finale to this ambitious series, which has successfully raised the bar for British detective drama’.
Michael drew on his German heritage once more to play a German POW in a BBC Four drama called Hidden Lives, based on the best-selling book by Simon Garfield. Beginning in the 1930s, more than 1,000 ‘ordinary’ people volunteered to chronicle their daily lives. These diaries were compiled for the Mass Observation Project, described as ‘an anthropology of ourselves’. In his book, Our Hidden Lives, Simon Garfield selected five of the most interesting diarists and focused on the post-war years from 1945 to 1948, providing a remarkable picture of how people coped in Britain during this period when the austerity seemed to drag on and on.
In the TV adaptation, Michael’s character has a sexual relationship with an older man, a snobbish gay antiques dealer who lives in Edinburgh, played by Ian McDiarmid. This required the actors to be half naked in bed together. It was an awkward scene for both of them but Michael didn’t shy away from such things. Stripping naked for his first appearance on TV had lessened his inhibitions!
By now, Michael was gaining a reputation as a versatile actor, not afraid to take on challenging roles, playing characters that were not necessarily likeable and, in some cases, distinctly unpleasant – psychotic murderers, callous boyfriends, violent criminals and demonic ‘angels’ among them.
In an episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, called After the Funeral, he played an upper-class Englishman named George Abernethie who is believed to be the sole beneficiary in his uncle Richard’s will. But after Richard’s death, the family seem surprised to hear that he had disinherited his favourite nephew and shared his wealth among the others. The two had supposedly argued recently but the family lawyer, George Entwhistle, suspects the new may be a forgery and he has reason to be even more suspicious when Richard’s eccentric sister Cora remarks at the funeral, ‘It’s been hushed up very nicely … but he was murdered, wasn’t he?’
Richard, 68 and a widower, had lost his only child, Mortimer, to polio six months earlier. Mortimer, who was about to marry, died with no issue and so Richard needed to revise his will. He was the eldest of a family of seven, of which only he, a reclusive brother Timothy and a sister Cora, the youngest, are still alive. As well as his nephew, George, Richard had two nieces, Susan and Rosamund – the children of siblings who have already died. His decision was to split his wealth into six portions, for his five blood relations and a sixth for Helen, the widow of a beloved brother killed in the recent war.
The day after the funeral Cora is beaten to death in her sleep and Entwhistle calls on his old friend Poirot (David Suchet) to investigate. Poirot questions the family members at Richard’s magnificent estate, Enderby, for which Rotherfield Park in Hampshire was used. The motive for Cora’s murder is unclear. There was no theft. But her timid maid, Miss Gilchrist, tells how she overheard Richard telling Cora that he suspected he was being poisoned. Has she been murdered to stop her from speaking out? Poirot warns Entwhistle that Miss Gilchrist may herself be a target for the murderer.
Cora had been a keen artist and collector of paintings from local sales. The day after her funeral, an art critic friend of hers arrives to evaluate her most recent acquisitions. His visit had been planned before her death, but he finds nothing of value. That evening, Miss Gilchrist is nearly killed by arsenic poison in a slice of wedding cake apparently sent to her through the post.
In typical Agatha Christie fashion, there are plenty of red herrings. None of the family is above suspicion as they were all alone on the day of Cora’s murder with no firm alibis. Susan, who inherits her Aunt Cora’s property, is married to dispensing chemist Gregory, who had been responsible for deliberately administering a non-lethal overdose to an awkward customer. The other niece, Rosamund, is hiding a secret, which turns out to be her husband’s infidelity and her own pregnancy. The unpleasant Timothy Abernethie might have been able to commit the murder of Cora, as might his wife, Maude and so, too, could the seemingly genteel Helen. Or perhaps George himself might have killed his uncle in anger after their argument.
But then something occurs to Helen and she telephones Entwhistle with the news that she has realised what struck her as odd on the day of the funeral. But before she can say what it is she is hit on the head. While Helen is away recovering, Poirot – ever the one for a sense of theatre – gathers everyone to Enderby Hall for the denouement. It’s gasps and dropped jaws all round as he reveals that it wasn’t Cora at Richard’s funeral but Miss Gilchrist in disguise. She had put a sedative in Cora’s tea and left her at home while she attended the funeral and reading of the will. None of the family had seen Cora for over 20 years so fooling them wasn’t too difficult. She wished to plant the idea that Richard’s death had been murder so that, when Cora herself was murdered, it would seem that the same attacker was responsible.
Miss Gilchrist had copied Cora’s mannerisms, in particular a characteristic turn of her head. But Helen had realised that ‘Cora’ had turned her head to the left, not the right. Miss Gilchrist had made the mistake of practising in a mirror without taking on board that the reflection was a reverse of reality. She had deliberately poisoned herself with the arsenic-laced wedding cake to avoid suspicion.
It transpires that Miss Gilchrist was sure that one of the paintings Cora had recently bought was by Vermeer. Aware that her art-critic friend was bound to recognise it when he visited the following day, Miss Gilchrist hastily hatched a plot and covered the Vermeer with a painting she had done herself. But she was unable to cover up the fresh scent of the paint. Once accused, Miss Gilchrist breaks down and admits that she murdered Cora because she hated her and desperately wanted enough money to be able to rebuild her beloved teashop, which she had had to close during the war because of food shortages. There is no evidence of foul play regarding Richard Abernethie’s death.
Michael was utterly convincing, playing the rude, self-centred, hard drinking and gambling George Abernethie with a posh English accent.
The long-running TV series Trial & Retribution, created by Lynda La Plante, was a gritty and superior procedural cop drama that, in each story, showed the crime, the investigation and the trial. It starred David Hayman as DCS Mike Walker and later, Victoria Smurfit as DCI Roisin Connor. In 2006 Michael filmed the two-part story, Sins of the Father, which was shown on ITV1 in January of the following year.
The story revolved around pretty teenager Emily Harrogate (played by Carey Mulligan), the daughter of a seemingly happily married middle-class family. When she is found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs by her parents John and Deirdre, the marks on her neck and the force with which she fell suggest she was attacked. When Connor and DS Satchell investigate, they discover that this outwardly stable family is falling apart. It emerges that John is having an affair with a work colleague and that his troubled teenage son, James, cannot provide an alibi for his whereabouts on the night of Emily’s death. A breakthrough in the case comes when an eyewitness leads the cops to a teenage neighbour, Michael Summerby (Andrew Lee Potts), who was Emily’s secret boyfriend. His flimsy alibi makes him the number-one suspect and he is eventually charged with her murder.
Michael played the lad’s defence barrister, Douglas Nesbitt. He has little to work with, since Summerby cannot provide an alibi. Then, while in court, Summerby all but confesses to being responsible for her death, stating that he ‘was to blame’. He confesses that he was in her parents’ house at the time of her death and that she was hysterically backing away from him before falling down the cellar stairs. The jury have little trouble in pronouncing him guilty but it’s a miscarriage of justice. John and his son James are hiding a secret and John is quite prepared to destroy the life of an innocent man.
For a change, Michael was able to play the barrister as an Irishman and his calm and methodical courtroom demeanour contrasted well with the excitable and emotional per
formance by an impressive Andrew Lee Potts.
Towards the end of 2005 Michael started a gruelling 10 weeks of physical training. It wasn’t just a keep-fit routine; rather it was the prelude to a movie that was to bring him to the consciousness of America.
CHAPTER FIVE
HOLLYWOOD VIA ANCIENT GREECE
For a shy man, the idea of appearing larger than life on cinema screens in bikini-style leather trunks and little else may have sounded rather daunting but Michael took it in his stride. After all, he had appeared butt naked in a TV commercial!
The stylised sand-and-sandals movie 300 took a very modern approach to dramatising an ancient battle. It was a story that resonated with Michael because he had been taught it at primary school back in Killarney – how in 480 BC King Leonidas mustered 300 super-fit Spartans to fight a massive Persian army marching towards Greece. The Spartans headed towards a narrow pass at Thermopylae to give themselves a fighting chance and a fierce battle took place before they were eventually overwhelmed by the Persians.
Director Zak Snyder, who had directed the 2004 zombie flick Dawn of the Dead, wanted to create a visually strong movie based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, so that the scenes in the ancient tale resembled high-quality comic-book art. There would be much use of CGI and other high-tech special effects but the main cast of Spartans would not be allowed to rely on such wizardry to get into shape. So in September 2005, after Michael had been cast as the impassioned young warrior Stelios, he and five other wannabe Spartans were sent to boot camp for 10 weeks of intensive training to get their bodies in shape.
For four hours a day, five days a week, they ran, lifted weights and used all manner of gym equipment, all of which gave new meaning to the hoary old actor’s phrase of ‘suffering for my art’. ‘We knew we were going to have to wear leather Speedos and very little else in the film,’ said Michael. ‘They let us eat whatever we wanted but the workouts were brutal.’
But the punishing regime produced impressive results so that, by the time they started filming in November, they were in better shape than they had ever been. Their costumes consisted of tight and skimpy leather pants, red cloaks and sandals, which caused a fair amount of sniggering and mickey-taking among the mainly British cast, which included Gerard Butler as Leonidas, Lean Heady as his queen, Gorgo, Vincent Regan as Captain and Dominic West as the manipulative politician, Theron.
The movie was visually stunning, with the characters looking like drawings come to life against a dramatic backdrop of cliff tops, towering buildings and storm-lashed seas, with much use of high and low perspective. Red robes and a liberal amount of blood added slashes of vivid colour to grey or blue backgrounds. Together with dramatic and artistic posturing, it suggested comic-book art as well as the finest Biblical paintings from the old masters.
The story was a blood-fest from start to finish, with heads being cut off and flying through the air, soldiers charging on horses with swords aloft, bows and arrows and spears. But the cast saw little of this, as most of it was added by computer at a later stage. ‘The actors, very often working up to sixteen hours a day, were surrounded by a giant blank green screen and nothing else,’ explained Michael. ‘My training for the theatre was very useful. When you are working live in the theatre you may be looking out over an audience but you are imagining another environment.
‘In our mind’s eye we would project onto the screen the invading hordes of Persian soldiers or a vast landscape or extreme climate conditions – whatever was required – and take on the physicality of that. In those conditions the actors are thrown back onto the relationships and dynamics between themselves, which is exactly how it is in the theatre.’
But the rather camp atmosphere of muscular men in bulging leather pants gave rise to much mirth between takes, with some of the jokes being borrowed from the Monty Python team’s classic Biblical comedy, Life of Brian. As Michael told The Times, ‘There were a lot of Life of Brian gags, and certainly when Dominic West walked on in his full costume, someone did say, “He wanks as high as any man in Wome!” But that just helps to get it out of your system, so there’s none of it left in the film itself.’
Michael considered Zack Snyder to be an inspirational director and he welcomed Gerard Butler’s supportive comments during filming. ‘We had scenes together and he’d be like, “Nice work, you’ll do well,”’ he recalled. ‘Things that are nice to hear when you’re lower down on the rung.’
300 was also Michael’s first Hollywood film and he was impressed by the size of his trailer. ‘I thought to myself, “Why did I bother getting a flat? I could have just lived in this!”’
On its release 300 was a huge box-office success but film critics, although agreeing on its visual merit, were generally not so enthusiastic about the storytelling. The Irish Times called it ‘a stylised, violent and heady cinematic experience’. The Times said, ‘It’s exhilarating stuff, and Snyder gets the most out of every cent of what was reportedly a comparatively low budget. Still, you start to tire of all the macho posturing and male bonding.’ To the Observer it was ‘a ridiculous rendering of the ancient world’ and the influential Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times said, ‘300 has one-dimensional caricatures who talk like professional wrestlers plugging their next feud.’
The critic from the Sunday Telegraph appeared to waver between like and dislike – ‘This film is historically one-dimensional, ethically distasteful and frequently ludicrous. It is also, however, hardly ever boring’ – but the Daily Mail was as sure-footed as a sandal-clad Spartan in its scathing review. ‘Messrs Miller and Snyder have joined forces to make the most preposterous picture of 2007,’ it said. ‘It’s hilariously humourless, violently homophobic yet weirdly camp – a unique, if hardly praiseworthy, combination.’
Despite the critics’ opinions, 300 made a huge impact: it was tremendously successful and brought Michael to the attention of America. After his premature attempt to crack America following Band of Brothers, Michael had waited to have another go and now the time was right. ‘After 300, I thought, “All right, I’m in a good position now to come back and get an agent.”’ But his next move was a step back to his early days of acting.
Since leaving drama school Michael’s acting work had been almost exclusively for television, so he welcomed the chance to tread the boards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2006. There he appeared in a play by the journalist Mary Kenny called Allegiance, based on a meeting in London in 1921 between Winston Churchill – at that time colonial secretary in David Lloyd George’s government – and Michael Collins to discuss an Anglo-Irish peace treaty and a measure of independence for Ireland.
In this fictitious account of their meeting, the two men – with widely different upbringings, political beliefs and ambitions – start off wary of each other and then enjoy the cut and thrust of conversation on subjects such as imperialism and resistance. Later they discover an empathy with each other and there is a touching moment when Churchill – played by Mel Smith – cries at the memory of his deceased youngest daughter and Collins instinctively puts a consoling hand on his opponent’s shoulder.
Michael was both excited and amused to be playing Collins, aware of his family’s belief that they are descended from the legendary Irish revolutionary. For her part, author Kenny, a columnist with the Irish Independent, said she was thrilled that such a good-looking man as Michael Fassbender was to play Collins. She told the newspaper, ‘Michael Collins was a devastatingly handsome man – all the newspapers at the time mentioned his stunning appearance. Michael Fassbender is perfect casting to Mel Smith’s wonderful portrayal of a thoughtful, sometimes brooding Winston.’
The play ran for a week at Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms to generally good, although varied, reviews. The Sunday Times commented, ‘Smith handles adequately enough an almost impossible part.’ But it was far less complimentary about Michael’s portrayal: ‘As Collins, Fassbender is too oikish by far. Collins’s myth derives, in part at least, from his har
d-edged charisma and Fassbender’s performance has none of it. The shortcomings of Fassbender, however, are as nothing compared with the stasis of the production and the theatrical illiteracy of Kenny’s script. Collins and Churchill sound as if they have swallowed encyclopaedias.’
The Independent, by contrast, was impressed by both men. ‘With his jowl spilling over his collar, his neck stiffening and his fingers wagging, Smith has slipped most convincingly into Churchill’s shoes. He smacks his lips, sometimes swallows his words and punctuates sentences with a gravelly grunt. Fassbender endows Collins with a magnetism and quiet intelligence. An absorbing entertainment.’
The Guardian added, ‘As is so often the case with drama in Edinburgh, the play feels more like a snippet than a fully-fledged play, and it comes from that old-school drama where people talk endlessly at each other. But the piece mostly transcends these limitations, and Fassbender and Smith are excellent.’
Michael’s next move was back to the big screen. French director François Ozon has made a name for himself with such movies as 8 Women, Swimming Pool, 5x2 and Water Drops on Burning Rocks. But it was to Edwardian London that he turned to make his first English-language movie, Angel (The Real Life of Angel Deverell). Based on the 1957 book by English novelist Elizabeth Taylor, it was inspired by Marie Corelli, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria’s favourite writer.