10 Greatest Actors Alive (And Currently Working)
6. Michael Fassbender
As equally at home with Shakespeare as he is the X-Men, Michael Fassbender manages to delicately balance his time between art and commerce. This is a trait that all of the great leading men - from Brando and Newman, to Pitt and Clooney - have shared, and it’s testament to Fassbender’s skill and range that his name can be mentioned alongside them.
From his art-house exertions with Steve McQueen, to his involvement in more populist fare, Fassbender is always the most hypnotic thing on screen; he is cinema’s great seducer. Everything he does is, at the very least, interesting, and the only notable misstep in his oeuvre (The Counsellor) was, in hindsight, a mistake worth making.
Mistake isn’t a word you readily identify with Fassbender, though, and you only need to look at his filmography to reinforce this. Since 2008, he has put in magnificent performances in Hunger, Eden Lake, Fish Tank, Inglourious Basterds, Jane Eyre, A Dangerous Method, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, and Frank. With upcoming roles as Macbeth and Steve Jobs to come, Fassbender looks set to continue working his hallucinatory magic.
See Him In: Fish Tank: a challenging role in one of the greatest British films ever made.