Why Michael Fassbender didn’t play Mad Max for George Miller

We here at JoBlo.com love us some Michael Fassbender. From Hunger to Inglourious Basterds to 12 Years a Slave to pretty much any of his upcoming projects, the man is one of the finest actors of his generation. But it’s not like he lands every role he wants. He has been open about inadvertently sabotaging his own audition for James Bond by pushing Daniel Craig instead of himself, but he’s missed out on major parts in worse ways than that.

Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Michael Fassbender remembered trying to land the role of Max Rockatansky for George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. But it went about as bad as it could, with the actor remembering it was straight-up awful. For starters, he was late to meet with Miller by nearly an hour. Frazzled, he said he didn’t have his bearings when he did finally make it to the Warner Bros. lot. “​​I arrived and I was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and they were like, ‘Fine.’ And then George Miller has this acting coach…and it was like, it was so excruciating. I’ve been classically trained, so I have my process of, obviously, there’s an objective that the character has and activities that I’m gonna play to get it. So I felt like you’re teaching granny how to suck eggs here — this guy really got on my nerves.”

The acting coach – merely doing his job at the instruction of George Miller – took it one step further. “He was like, ‘I want you to say this phrase: get out of the room, but I want you to physicalize it Michael,’” which seems like the coach trying to lay a bit of a burn…“It was so… I couldn’t wait to get out of there.” Michael Fassbender would eventually man a very different set of wheels, competing in the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2022 and 2023.

Of course, Tom Hardy ended up getting the Fury Road lead. Instead, that year Michael Fassbender would play both Macbeth and Steve Jobs, showing just how diverse of an actor he truly is. Fassbender is currently starring in Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag (you can read our review here).

How do you think Michael Fassbender would have done as Mad Max in Fury Road? Let us know below!