Michael Fassbender is an actor in films.
12 Years a Slave is a 2013 period drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup , a New York State-born free African-American man who was kidnapped in Washington , D.C. , in 1841 and sold into slavery . Hunger is a 2008 British-Irish historical drama film directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender , Liam Cunningham , and Liam McMahon , about the 1981 Irish hunger strike . Michael Fassbender . He first came to prominence for his role as IRA activist Bobby Sands in Hunger ( 2008 ) , for which he won a British Independent Film Award . The Counselor is a 2013 British-American dark thriller film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Cormac McCarthy . It stars Michael Fassbender as the eponymous Counselor as well as Penélope Cruz , Cameron Diaz , Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt .