Michael Fassbender - Jim Maloney

The story of an outsider who rocked Hollywood with a string of powerful films, earning him plaudits, awards, and an army of adoring fans

His chiseled yet rugged good looks and masculinity set him apart from the "pretty boy" actors, making him popular with both men and women. His intriguing mix of Irish and German roots has infused him with an easygoing charm combined with a steely confidence and determination to succeed. Michael Fassbender doesn't just act, he becomes the people he is portraying in a type of method acting that has seen him likened to Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, both of whom were his childhood heroes. He is also an actor with remarkable versatility. In his breakthrough movie Hunger, he went on a strict diet to lose weight in order to play IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. In contrast he portrayed an English army officer in the rollicking World War II adventure Inglorious Basterds; the comic book villain Magneto in X-Men: First Class, and psychiatrist Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method. He shamelessly bared all as a sex addict in Shame and got moody and broody as a chilling hired killer in the action thriller Haywire. In this eagerly awaited biography, Jim Maloney tells his remarkable rise to fame from Heidelberg in southwest Germany, to Killarney in Ireland, on to London and Hollywood. Read how he thought he was Superman, why he dropped out of drama school, his brief attempt to become a heavy metal rock star, and the piece of paper pinned to his school notice board that was to change his life forever.