Michael Fassbender Hated ‘Steve Jobs’ So Much He Wanted To Hurt Himself To Get Out of the Role

Just because the world’s biggest actors get acclaim for their work, it doesn’t mean they always like the jobs that they are given. When Michael Fassbender took on the role of Steve Jobs in 2016, he got acclaim from nearly every critic in the process. However, while he was filming, Fassbender wasn’t sure about the movie he was acting in nor the lingo that he was forced to use. He almost took extreme measures to get out of his Oscar-nominated turn in the film. 

Michael Fassbender’s career

Fassbender has been acting on screen for two decades, although he didn’t become a bona fide star for many years. His first significant role came in Band of Brothers.

He and several other young up-and-comers like Tom Hardy portrayed a platoon of soldiers fighting during World War 2. The movie was among the most successful miniseries of all time. 

Despite this, it still took several years for Fassbender to become a household name for his acting work. He had small roles in hit films like Zack Snyder’s 300. Still, his first attention-getting role may have been in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, in which he played a mercenary hellbent on killing Nazis. 

By the time that X-Men: First Class came along, Fassbender was becoming a star. For the next several years, his roles in films like Prometheus and 12 Years a Slave, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, padded his impressive resume.

In 2015, however, everything began to come full circle. Fassbender’s unlikely turn as Steve Jobs helped define him as one of his generation’s greatest actors. However, his thoughts during filming did not show any hope in this. 

Another day at work

Steve Jobs had all the makings of a massive hit. With Danny Boyle behind the camera and an Aaron Sorkin script, the film got Oscar buzz before anybody saw a second of footage.

Fassbender’s casting was curious for several critics, but none were harsher than when he first got hands-on Sorkin’s work. Speaking to an argument about the movie that he claims was his most challenging work, Fassbender spoke about his initial thoughts. 

“He wrote all that stuff!” Fassbender said (per The Independent). “It was so dense! It was such a mountain, and I’m a slow learner, so when the script arrived for me and the opportunity came to play the part, I really thought, ‘This is not me. This should be somebody else. It’s a miscast scenario.'”

Fassbender was hellbent on getting out of the stressful role. Still, after speaking to both his father and his agent, he decided to take it anyway. 

Getting out of Jobs 

Fassbender did all the preparations to play the late Apple founder. However, once he got on set and began rehearsing, he felt outmatched by the words on the page.

Not a tech expert, Fassbender struggled to know what Jobs was talking about throughout the movie. He almost took a drastic step to get out of it, too. 

“But in rehearsals, I was trying to find a way to get out of the job,” he said (per The Independent). “I remember telling my driver, ‘If I put my arm in the door, you should slam it. It should cause a break and it should get me out of this gig.'”

Luckily for both he and audiences, Fassbender stuck around. The film was one of the most well-reviewed movies of 2015, and Fassbender’s performance was a massive part of the praise.

Since then, he’s kept steady work in a variety of major motion pictures, but his work in Jobs is yet to be matched. Needless to say, Fassbender made the right choice grinding out the uneasy project.

However, his story shows that even the biggest names struggle with their work sometimes. The beauty is that it often pays out.