Michael Fassbender

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.

My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, 'I'm good enough.' That became my mantra.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Magneto has a whole lot of complexity to him. Emotionally, he's coming from a very damaged place. I like the ambivalence of it. I want the audience leaving the theater wondering, asking the questions themselves rather than being spoon-fed like a lot of these super-villain characters.

Any good kitchen should be stocked up in oysters, shouldn't they?

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?

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.

Even if I'm playing a superhero, it has to be steeped in reality.

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.