Michael Fassbender’s Dietary Routine for Maintaining Hollywood Shape

Michael Fassbender has had a fairly spectacular career over the past two decades and change, ever since his big break in HBO’s limited series military epic Band of Brothers. He’s worked on big studio and indie films, and has worked with some of the finest filmmakers living, including (but not limited to) Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott, Terrence Malick, and three with Steve McQueen.

This autumn, he’s directed two films from two more filmmakers with distinct visions: David Fincher’s The Killer and Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins.

But, given his extensive career, there is one character with whom the 46-year-old actor would want to have dinner: Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, the anti-hero/villain (depending on who you ask) who he played in four X-Men films between 2011 and 2019. “[I would have] a few questions,” he adds. “I would say Magneto.”

His X-Men character (also played by Sir Ian McKellen in the FOX X-Men series) is famous for his friendship/rivalry with Professor X in the series; Magneto is the more violent and aggressive of the two, typically taking on a more antagonistic role in the fight for Mutant rights, whereas Professor X prefers to avoid conflict. In some ways, their connection is at the heart of the X-Men saga in general.

But the X-Men films weren’t Fassbender’s only source of contention. The first film he worked on with McQueen (a British filmmaker who won Best Director for 12 Years a Slave, which also earned Fassbender his first Oscar nomination) was 2008’s Hunger, in which he played Bobby Sands, a real-life Irish politician who went on a hunger strike while imprisoned.

He was quite harsh on himself with a low calorie diet in order to drop weight for the job. “I usually sit between 72 and 74 kilos [158 and 163 pounds].” When I completed Hunger, the goal was to lose 58 kilos [127 pounds], which I achieved over a 10-week period.”

To get there, he started by restricting himself to 1,000 calories a day for “about four weeks” until hitting a plateau when his weight dropped to 64 kilos [141 pounds]. He claims that at that time, he reduced his caloric intake to 600 calories a day, consisting of “a tin of sardines, berries, and a handful of nuts a day.”

Michael Fassbender does not support this type of severe diet. “I wouldn’t do what I did for Hunger again,” he said.”I wouldn’t do that to my body again.”