It looks like the public are finally catching on to something that directors and actors have know for years: Irish screen actor Michael Fassbender is the greatest leading actor of his generation.

In roles that range from Carl Jung to Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester, it looks like the actor's ship has finally come in.

Born to an Irish mother and a German father Fassbender grew up in Country Kerry working in his parents' restaurant. He got his big break in the role of Stelios in the 2006 Spartan war movie 300.

That led to his starring role in Steve McQueen's masterpiece Hunger, with Fassbender playing IRA volunteer Bobby Sands, the man who led the 1981 republican hunger strike. The film won 30 awards, including the Camera d'Or at Cannes, making Fassbender a name to watch.
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Now the 34-year-old actor is now starring in McQueen's second film, Shame. 'I think we can trust each other,' McQueen told Variety. 'It's a bit like falling in love - when you have it you recognise it and that's it. I think he's the best actor out there.'

As well as McQueen's Shame, in which Fassbender plays a sociopathic sex-addict, he plays the Swiss psycho-analyst Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method opposite Keira Knightley as a Russian beauty.

Regardless of his rising star, Fassbender still remains an unprepossessing Irish lad. 'I don't think I'm particularly interesting,' he told the New York Times recently. 'I feel like a bit of a jerk sometimes, talking about myself.'