Magneto, clad in black, strides down the hallway, his eyes blue slits above high hard cheekbones. On cue, the elevator doors whisper open. He steps in, and the people already there turn silent.
Then, in the back, he spots Blink, another mutant.

"How are you?" he exclaims. "I thought you were terrific!"
"Thank you so much!" she says softly, shyly.
"Really great!" he beams.

This is not exactly how you expect a scene from "X-Men: Days of Future Past" to play out, especially once he starts complimenting her outfit. What's next? A couple's spa day with hot stone massages?

Of course, these are Michael Fassbender and Bingbing Fan, not the characters they play, and this is the junket hotel for their new movie, not the violent landscapes of a blasted future — and retro `70s past — that its high-energy plot plays out against.

Yet it seems that, after all the permutations (this is the seventh "X-Men" film, counting reboots and spinoffs), the real "X-Men" story is one of old and new friends who work hard and get along well.

And with all the big-budget stakes and ongoing controversies (conspicuous by his absence on this junket: embattled director Bryan Singer) that may be their greatest secret power of all.

MISSION: 'X-MEN'

It has been a long weekend of private screenings, prodding photographers, clueless interviewers and either questions the actors have heard a hundred times before ("So, what super power would you like to have?") or ones they're trying to avoid (their opinions on old, recently revived sex-abuse accusations Singer's facing).

It's a bit of a grind, but the cast — with Hugh Jackman as chief cheerleader — has done a good job of keeping its spirits up. (He's also, courtesy of his Laughing Man company, provided a never-ending supply of freshly brewed espresso).

Still, as Fassbender, 37, sinks into a couch this afternoon — a barely touched lunch still sitting in the hallway — he can't help looking a little worn, a little weary.

The work began long before the filming, with a tricky time-travel storyline that mixes and matches some of the stars of the first "X-Men" trilogy — Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, among them — with Fassbender, James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, from the last one.

That Fassbender and McAvoy are playing younger versions of McKellen and Stewart makes it even trickier.

"In the last film, Matthew (Vaughn, its director) said 'I like your accent, it's kind of weird — not really Irish, but there's this strange sort of James Bond edge,'" Fassbender says. "So I didn't have to do any work on it. But here the performances needed to parallel each other, so rather than going up to Sir Ian and saying 'You need to study my accent,' I thought I'd try to copy his... After all, it's his role. I'm just a visitor."

The two actors had never met before, and shared no scenes on the movie — "I didn't even see him until Comic-Con," Fassbender admits — so the younger man started studying McKellen's films.

"There was this clip on YouTube where Sir Ian was giving a lecture on Shakespeare," Fassbender says. "I listened to that one over and over to try and get it. So when you see this 'X-Men,' well, I sound a bit different. Perhaps the whole time Magneto's been locked up he's been taking elocution lessons."

Born in Heidelberg to an Irish mother and German father, Fassbender grew up in Killarney, but took regular trips back to Germany to see relatives; the bicultural background both enlarged his horizons (he's fluent in German; he's also developing an epic film based on the Celtic myth of Cuculainn) and bound him with other ethnically split boys.

"All my close friends from home are the same," he says. "Marco is half-Italian, half-Canadian - there's an Irish bit in there too, so I guess he's cut up in thirds. My best friend Emerson is half-American, half-Irish; Peter is half-German, half-Irish. I never noticed it when it was happening but I suppose it sort of explains some things. We felt a bit like misfits of some sort and ended up gelling."

"My dad, first and foremost, had the ethos that if you're going to do a job, do it properly, or don't bother doing it at all," Fassbender says. "That was always the lesson in my house, from both parents really: The work ethic. And that's stayed with me. I feel very lucky that I'm working, and I don't get flippant about it. If something went wrong in a day's filming and I ever thought it was in any way due to my laziness — that'd be the worst feeling in the world."

Although he's known for his driven characters now — the self-loathing sex-addict in "Shame," the sadistic plantation owner in "12 Years a Slave" — Fassbender was a fun-loving teen whose favorite film was "Fletch" and first passion was heavy metal.

"I wanted to do music but it didn't come to me the same way; I just wasn't good enough," he says frankly. "But acting, the first time I did a drama class, I just felt immediately at home with it, and as soon as that class ended, I signed up for the next one. And I thought, all right, this is it. I just remember there was a real clarity for me."

Fassbender went to drama school, but didn't graduate, had an early part in HBO's "Band of Brothers" but saw it trimmed, and returned home with "my tail between my legs." He finally made his movie debut in "a leather Speedo" in "300" in 2006 but real success eluded him. (With a practicality his father would approve of, he still lives in the same cheap London apartment.)

Things moved to a new level, though, once he began collaborating with director Steve McQueen.

In "Hunger," in 2008, Fassbender played Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, in a performance marked not just by his intense weight loss but by an unbroken, 17-minute dialogue scene. In "Shame," in 2011, he played a solitary New Yorker who despises sex almost as much as he despises himself - and so engages in it, indiscriminately, compulsively. In last year's "12 Years a Slave," he played a monstrous, alcoholic racist. It won him an Oscar nomination.

"It's just very clear with Steve," the actor says of their collaborations. "It's bizarre, actually, I always seem to know what he's going to say to me at the end of the take. It's very strange - it's like being plugged in to somebody — but it's the best. And while he's very demanding, on everyone — the focus levels are really intense — when we break, we all have lunch together and you can relax and just turn it off. And then turn it on again."

Which is important to Fassbender. To do one dark character after another — he just did a film of "Macbeth" with Marion Cotillard - could be draining. Also, dull.

"I definitely don't want to get into the comfortable zone of, 'This is what I do well, so this is what I do,'" he says. "Certainly everyone has a limit - there are things other people do much better than me — but I try to mix it up. Although in the end it's far more the script and the filmmaker I'm drawn to than the part."

You know an actor by the people he chooses to work with, and to look at Fassbender's filmography is to see roles of different sizes, films of different budgets, but a nearly unbroken line of varied but very good directors — painterly Ridley Scott, mystical Terrence Malick, gritty Andrea Arnold, manic Quentin Tarantino, laser-focused Steven Soderbergh.

"Steven moves so fast," Fassbender says of the man who directed him in the spy thriller "Haywire." "He comes into a room, scopes it, he's like 'Camera here, camera there' and off you go. Fast. Steve (McQueen), too. One night on 'Shame,' we shot 22 pages of dialogue. 'Hunger,' one day, we shot 27 pages of dialogue. Whereas on 'X-Men,' you may spend all day just to get two pages... It's a very different discipline — you have to pace yourself differently — but I have to say I prefer moving quickly."

Of course, as action-filled as "Haywire" was, unlike "Days of Future Past" it didn't feature Fassbender levitating a football stadium. Nor did "Shame" feature its hero flying gracefully through the air. Those complicated, big-budget sequences take some extra time, and some planning. Also a bit of adjusting. Literally.

"You make sure that all the, er, tackle's out of the way," says the man whose full-frontal nude scenes in "Shame" are still a source of jokes (and some admiration). "Something gets caught in the wrong place, it's fatal! So yeah, you put on your harness and they clip you in." Then, he says, the effects crew punches a flight plan into a computer, "and then you bless yourself, and off you go, really."

Flying around major cities, mentally sending metal hurtling through the air — it's a long way from "Macbeth." But for Fassbender, that's the point — just as "Macbeth" was a long way from the next "X-Men" film (which he's already signed on for) and his odd upcoming indie "Frank" will be even further from his "Assassin's Creed," which after many script rewrites is finally ready for production.

"`Assassin's,' I'm so happy with," Fassbender says. "I can't say anything more, but for a video game, the concept behind it, this idea of DNA memory, it is so interesting.




'Macbeth' — well that was a real treat. Marion is so brave and so responsive and alive and simple and elegant... And coming back to this franchise, I feel that 'X-Men' is a special one in the superhero genre because it's about people who feel on the edge of society — I think that's a fantastic theme to have at the center of a superhero movie, and I'm already looking forward to what's next."

And whatever it is, the only certainty is — it'll be different.

"You absolutely tend to search for something light after something heavy," he says. "'You want me to go to the Caribbean, shoot 'Blue Lagoon 3,' lovely!' But sometimes that luxury is not yours to take. Something comes up, it's a little dark, I've just finished something dark - but the director's great, the story's great, it's too good to turn down. It seems I end one job and I start prepping for the next. But right now, it's very simple for me. It's all about work."