? Less perplexing was the allure he had as a name-above-the-title film star: grit, danger, charisma; the scrappy, scruffy Irish roguishness that formed the blueprint for our present-day Mescals and Keoghans. Then, as if a trapdoor had opened up beneath him, he seemed to vanish without a trace.
, a TV series about espionage that was about as anonymous as its title.
. He’s great at this kind of thing – men barely there – potentially because he feels so at home doing it. One foot in a place, the other elsewhere.
in 2016. “But I’m going to take some downtime now.” He didn’t even rule out stopping entirely. “Part of me thinks you have a time as an actor when you’re at your best. There’s a journey to it, and then it’s downhill.”
added to a sensational CV.
, a psycho-thriller adapted from one of Jo Nesbø’s novels about the unfortunately named detective Harry Hole, seemed cut together by a lunatic; a baffling, partially unfinished and practically Lynchian mess of bad dubbing, Sigur Rós, and the worst sex scene in the world. To his credit, Fassbender was largely blameless for these failures. And during a moment of time in which Hollywood seemed to be experiencing a dearth of new and exciting leading men, Fassbender stood out as someone with range, magnetism and an appeal that crossed genders and sexualities. Hollywood really, really needed him. But may have ended up using him too much.
– but they have similar career timelines. Both were propelled to international stardom at the same time, earning Oscar attention simultaneously and navigating the absurdities of Hollywood together. They were among the last stars forged in a very different kind of American film industry, where Harvey Weinstein reigned supreme, money hadn’t entirely fallen out of independent filmmaking, boutique film companies devoted to dramas for adults still existed, and stars felt “made” instead of born. It had been decided by the industry that the pair were going to be massive, and they were relentlessly foisted upon us. Between the years of 2014 and 2018, Fassbender and Vikander appeared in a total of 25 films – an absurd rate of productivity that made them briefly inescapable. It’s no wonder they got exhausted, packed up their things and headed to the continent instead.
and make crude jokes. Or it may be because he just doesn’t want to talk – a man once dubbed “Britain’s Brando” (despite his saying he doesn’t identify as British in the slightest) transformed into one of our most mysterious ex-movie stars.
The industry has changed radically since Fassbender’s heyday, exemplified by the fact that so much of his recent work has gone straight to streaming platforms. His kind of movie stardom is no longer in existence. But the question moving forward shouldn’t be whether he can regain his old status – more whether he’d even want to.
‘Black Bag’ is in cinemas
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