I like to do homework for a role and learned I had to be sociopath

Michael Fassbender on thriller The Agency

- BY FRAN BOWDEN

LEADING a double life is nothing new for Michael Fassbender, who is back on our screens as a CIA agent in season two of spy thriller The Agency.

An actor and a professional racing driver, Michael, 49, has reached a high level in both careers.

This is in no small part to his commitment to every challenge he takes on, be it on the racetrack or in front of the movie cameras.

The Irishman is known to have read the script for Steve McQueen's 2011 opus Shame around 350 times so he could get inside the head of a sex addict.

He has joked that it takes him a while to learn his lines, but he is only ever in 150% mode.

Michael said: "I'll read it 10 times a day. I'm a slow learner! It's just something I've always done.

"If I keep reading it, I feel like the dialogue is seeping into the bones and I'm thinking about the character as I'm reading. I just don't want to turn up on set unprepared.

"A lot of things can fall through the cracks that are out of my control.

"But the last thing is if I leave set and I'm, 'Oh, I messed up because I didn't do my homework'."

For The Agency, that homework involved speaking to real-life agents in order to get more of a feel of what was expected of him in his role as Brandon Colby, codenamed Martian.

Michael told The Arts Hour: "That was a real gateway into the character for me. The first guy I talked to, I felt like I wasn't going to find out many negative aspects, let's say.