In the recent "Jane Eyre" he played Edward Rochester, he was a Roman soldier on the run in ancient Britain in last year's "Centurion." And we see him now as Erik Lehnsherr, the tormented Holocaust survivor who will become Magneto in "X-Men: First Class."

"I haven't had time to sit back and sort of take stock," Michael says. "It is a dream come true for me. The way I got here, it took some time. Sometimes it takes a lot longer, sure. But I felt like I really took a journey to get to this point.

It's been an incredible trip from 'Hunger', this film definitely changed my life."

Michael says, 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."

"'Holocaust survivor' is the first part of his makeup. He tries to live an honest life even after the concentration camps, in the comic books. But the human race lets him down.

So he's left alone. Every personal relationship he has gets damaged or torn away from him."

He might have tried to back-engineer the character, as he was played in the earlier "X-Men" films by the great Sir Ian McKellen. But director Matthew Vaughn wouldn't hear of it.

"Mathew said, 'You know, there's something about this character that reminds me of an early Bond, a Sean Connery Bond from the '60s.' Connery had this unusual accent and voice and he heard similarities with my voice and we sort of went with that."

Michael is not new to comic-book adaptations, having played a heavy in "Jonah Hex" adaptation of last summer, and he takes each part seriously. "Just because it's a comic-book story or a fantasy, that doesn't mean I approach it with any less seriousness."

"The great thing about 'X-Men' is that within the philosophy and story of the saga there are very real and relevant human issues — alienation, being ostracized from society for whatever reasons — ethnicity, religious beliefs or sexual orientation."

And the setting for much of this prequel is the early 1960s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"It's a great manipulation, isn't it? Dealing with a period in history that has a lot of mystery still surrounding it, a lot of frenzy around the world, the paranoia. There is room in there to play with that piece of history, which our scriptwriters have very cleverly done."

But at some point, he will have to take a break, catch his breath, maybe spend some of his earnings on a castle in Ireland or something.

"You know, it's amazing. I don't even have a car, would you believe it? I had a motorbike and it got stolen last here. So I've got to buy another one of those, I suppose. I can treat myself to that."


Original Source is here