Last we heard, Irish actor (not German as we sort-of erroneously reported), Michael Fassbender was “in talks” to star in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards,” as British Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Fassbender was born in Germany, but moved to Ireland when he was two)
A new interview with IGN, basically confirms he’s been locked down for the role (as you probably imagined). Fassbender doesn’t reveal much (but those that read the script already know), but he does say he’s working on his German (Hicox poses as a German soldier in the film) in case Tarantino goes off-script.
“I always think my job is to tell a story. The character within a script is to tell a story. I’m just going to make sure that my German is good because he might want to drift off the script, just like you said, so I have to make sure that I’m prepared enough on the German. I prepare in a very disciplined fashion, in terms of the script. I work on it, over and over again, until I’m sick of it, and then I work on it a couple of other times, so I just prepare for getting it on the page and then I relax.”
Knowing Fassbender’s crazy commitment to a role, his German will be fucking perfect by the time cameras start rolling in two weeks. His performance as Bobby Sands in “Hunger,” was amazing and the actor dropped a shitload of weight to play the emaciated and incarcerated Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer (the film was harrowing).
Meanwhile, location shots of “Inglorious Bastards,” have found their way onto the Tarantino Archives. And it looks like either no one wants to tell Tarantino he can’t spell or the film’s title will actually be misspelled on purpose as, “Inglourious Basterds,” as it was in the original screenplay.