Michael Fassbender was a guest on The Ryan Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio 1 this morning and described his movie life as 'incredible'.
The German-Irish actor also told Tubridy about his blossoming relationship with Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, which developed when he co-starred with her on the newly-released The Light Between Oceans.
In that film he plays Tom Sherbourne, a veteran of World War I, who is hired as a lightkeeper at a lighthouse off the coast of Western Australia. He falls in love with a local girl, Isabel Graysmark (Vikander), and they marry.
She loses two pregnancies in three years, and fears she may never become a mother. Shortly after the second Tom discovers a washed-up rowboat carrying a dead man and a badly-frightened baby girl.
Tom knows that he's required to report the discovery, but Isabel fears that the baby will be sent to an orphanage, and persuades her husband to pass the baby off as their own.
"It was apparent, immediately to me when we were working together, that she was such a force," Fassbender told Tubridy. "We met on the job and, you know . . . I guess you don't try and dampen the chemistry. You sort of go with it – and it was there. We sort of rolled with it."
Now that's he a top Hollywood actor, Fassbender has the luxury to choose his scripts, and take parts he wants rather than just trying to keep himself in the frame as a jobbing actor, which was his initial aim.
"I'm enjoying it - for sure I'm enjoying it," he said. "I'm enjoying it first and foremost because I'm working. For many years I just wanted to be able to do the job that I love doing, and then just sort of make a living out of it. So that that was the first step.
"To now be in a position that I've been in for the last, let's, five years, six years, to be working with the best in the industry is incredible. It's the most I could have ever hoped for."
The 39-year-old was recently back in his hometown of Killarney to be inducted into the Order of Innisfallen at a ceremony in reception at Muckross House in Killarney National Park.
Fassbender was accompanied to the gala ball by Alicia Vikander and his Killarney-based parents, Josef and Adele. He also famously sang at a wedding that night.
"It was great," he recalled to Ryan Tubridy. "I was definitely very humbled by it all. It was a great celebration, to see lots of people I hadn't seen in a while, teachers that I hadn't seen in years. Friends. It was a lot of fun."
