Michael Fassbender Quotes

We did a lot of that in drama school: intellectualising and maybe justifying your position. 'I am a thinking actor and I have thought this through' - well, just do it. I much prefer the doing aspect.

If I'm playing a murderer, I don't go out and start murdering people.

It's the worst thing if you're sitting there in the theater, going, "Oh, that's the guy who dates this person and likes to do this in the morning and that in the afternoon." Then you're just watching a brand, as opposed to an actor.

I think that idea of alienation, for whatever reason, is still very prevalent within our society and a lot of people deal with it - most people deal with it at some point in their life unless they're sort of the golden child. I think that's something that we all need to address.

I think the fact that us as a race still continues to be very tribal and we haven't really moved away from that over hundreds and hundreds of years of experience.

Everything I put my name to and take part in, I want to be good. That's not saying it will always happen. But I want to make bold choices.

I might have been curious about actors' lives when I was growing up. That's human nature.

At one point you think, well, it's funny, I could just be a starving actor... So if somebody were to pull the plug right now, there'd be no room for complaint.

I've always been more inclined to go out to work than carry on with academic studies.

Scratch the surface of what's socially normal. I suppose in some way all of us have something we display to the public and things we feel too ashamed of or uncomfortable with to reveal to other people.

As an actor, it's always been good to be working at all.

Nobody wants to hear Metallica at lunchtime.

You want society to accept you; but you can’t even accept yourself.

There's so much going on in the world. There's so much information being thrown at us - so many things are being sold to us, and we're being told how we should appear and how to be more successful, blah, blah, blah. How does that manifest itself? In the pressures, the stress, this need to escape.

The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really.

If you're dealing with a character that actually exists, there's an awful lot of information there. So, you can put together, from the information, motivations, insecurities, reactions. Where does that seed get born, if you like?... What I do is put that together.

I don't think peroxide-blond hair is a beneficial look for me.

If you're dealing with heavy topic matter, sometimes it's good to have a lightness going into it because it allows you to be open to possibilities, rather than getting rigidly stuck into a certain mind-set. People are strange. When you break up, sometimes you end up laughing with one another, as opposed to crying. Things in life are unusual, and to find those things, it's best to be relaxed.

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature.

Why does a three-year-old, and it's usually boys, want to drive the tractor or have machinery and be in control of it? I don't know. Why wouldn't you ask to boil a kettle or something? Maybe you would, I dunno.

My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, 'I'm good enough'. That became my mantra.

I take my work seriously but I can't take myself too seriously. I'm in such a crazy privileged position.

I’m aware of my weaknesses and THE BEAST WITHIN.

I don't know what's going to happen. I'm flavor of the month at the moment, but somebody else is going to roll around the corner in three months' time. I just want to keep working. I can't stop!

Everyone's crazy anyway. And those who think they aren't, are the ones who are even crazier - because they're in denial.

What I find really interesting is to try and mix it up, to push myself and try different things. I don't want to stay in my comfort zone. I want to take risks and keep myself scared.

Some actors might just do one thing, and another actor does another thing. I do an awful lot of preparation with the script, really. What I do is repeat the script, over and over and over again. Through that, it's almost like it seeps into my enamel. I'm reading all the characters, as well as my own. That is where the bulk of my preparation goes into.