Top 40 Michael Fassbender Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Big things have small beginnings.”

— Michael Fassbender

2. “We feel a lot of pressure about looking silly or appearing weak, whatever that means, or being a failure. You have to keep in your head: what’s the worst that can happen?”

— Michael Fassbender

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

— Michael Fassbender

4. “People are complicated. Our behavior towards one another is strange. So I like opportunities to investigate that.”

— Michael Fassbender

5. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

6. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

7. “Nobody wants to hear Metallica at lunchtime.”

— Michael Fassbender

8. “I suppose the doctor-patient relationship has that idea of transference. I think it’s a special thing that doctors have. We all find doctors sexy. That’s why there are so many TV shows about doctors.”

— Michael Fassbender

9. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

10. “Everyone’s crazy anyway. And those who think they aren’t, are the ones who are even crazier – because they’re in denial.”

— Michael Fassbender

11. “It’s more interesting isn’t it, if I’ve got a hedonistic dark side?”

— Michael Fassbender

12. “I quite enjoy the lines on my forehead because they show my life. That’s my history and I like to see that in other people. Like this wrinkle is due to some girl who broke my heart. I don’t want to escape it in any way.”

— Michael Fassbender

13. “We moved to Ireland when I was two and we settled in Killarney, Co Kerry. Where we were living in Germany is very industrial and very grey and my parents wanted to have countryside around for my sister and I to grow up in.”

— Michael Fassbender

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

— Michael Fassbender

15. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

16. “There’s no point thinking, ‘Well, my life’s certainly worked out, I’ve got all the answers.’ It would be wrong for me to say that I don’t get seduced by certain things. That things don’t become tempting.”

— Michael Fassbender

17. “I keep everything very simple. I like telling stories.”

— Michael Fassbender

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

18. “I could never swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws.”

— Michael Fassbender

19. “When I was four, I just wanted to drive, I collected toy cars. Where does that sort of thing come from? In hindsight you go, ‘Oh, liked it because of this.’ Maybe it’s just the wheel.”

— Michael Fassbender

20. “As an audience member and as an actor I much prefer to find ambiguity.”

— Michael Fassbender

21. “I’m always interested in trying to investigate different personalities. I want to keep myself guessing and keep the fear element alive, so that I don’t get too comfortable.”

— Michael Fassbender

22. “I always approach film as a fan.”

— Michael Fassbender

23. “Sometimes if I stick in a character too much I feel like I might start to get blinkered, because I’m making my decisions too definite.”

— Michael Fassbender

24. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

25. “I’ve always been more inclined to go out to work than carry on with academic studies.”

— Michael Fassbender

26. “I love to go into a movie and have no idea what’s going to happen in it.”

— Michael Fassbender

27. “For me, addiction comes down to basically where a pattern of behaviour has developed and that pattern of behaviour is becoming a very damaging cycle. It’s sort of damaging your relationships, friends or lovers, it’s damaging your own personal health and it’s damaging for you and your workplace.”

— Michael Fassbender

28. “I take my work seriously but I can’t take myself too seriously. I’m in such a crazy privileged position.”

— Michael Fassbender

29. “Any good kitchen should be stocked up in oysters, shouldn’t they?”

— Michael Fassbender

30. “Why not provoke some thought and get people talking about things? I like characters that are flawed because we all are. When people break up in a script, you think, Oh, right, there must be tears shed here. But maybe the fact of the matter is that they’re both laughing.”

— Michael Fassbender

31. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

32. “I’m fairly competitive.”

— Michael Fassbender

33. “I don’t think peroxide-blond hair is a beneficial look for me.”

— Michael Fassbender

34. “Nowadays, especially in big commercial films it’s much easier for the audience, and they tend to get spoonfed. It’s much more interesting to me, people leave the theater and they start asking themselves questions and find their own moral compass about what these characters have been doing.”

— Michael Fassbender

35. “When I go the cinema, unfortunately nowadays, especially with the big commercial films, the audience is spoon-fed through the entire experience and they don’t have to do any work.”

— Michael Fassbender

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

— Michael Fassbender

37. “You know, it’s amazing. I don’t even have a car, would you believe it? I had a motorbike and it got stolen last year. So I’ve got to buy another one of those, I suppose. I can treat myself to that.”

— Michael Fassbender

38. “Even if I’m playing a superhero, it has to be steeped in reality.”

— Michael Fassbender

39. “I came to Los Angeles and did auditions for television. I made a terrible mess of most of them and I was quite intimidated. I felt very embarrassed and went back to London. I got British television jobs intermittently between the ages of 23 and 27, but it was very patchy.”

— Michael Fassbender

40. “If there’s friends around, I’ll cook. Or if I have a girlfriend. But on my own I kind of fell out of the habit of it, and it’s a shame really because I know it’s good for me. It’s something quite therapeutic.”

— Michael Fassbender

41. “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...”

— Michael Fassbender

42. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

43. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

44. “I guess in the independent market, I’d be getting offers, but in terms of big studio films, I still have to audition. I don’t think my name is that well-known, I don’t have much of a following to guarantee box office success yet.”

— Michael Fassbender

45. “Trying to identify and understand, as opposed to judging, is very important for me, in approaching characters.”

— Michael Fassbender

46. “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.”

— Michael Fassbender

47. “There’s no point in swanning through and being cool as a breeze in every scene. It’s not really that interesting. Even if you’re a superhero.”

— Michael Fassbender

48. “As an audience member, those studio films are fun. I like an adventure tale, and I also like to go see something that has more of a social pulse. I like to keep learning and trying new things. And if the scripts are good, it doesn’t really matter.”

— Michael Fassbender

Featured in: Fun Quotes