Michael Fassbender Did His Full-Frontal Nude Scene For An Unexpected Reason

Michael Fassbender played a soldier on "Band of Brothers." He embraced Magneto's complex supervillainy in the ending of "X-Men: First Class" and several subsequent X-Men films. Even his occasional wrong turns, like the crime thriller flop "The Snowman," prove to be popular on streamers like Netflix. This speaks volumes of his star quality, which was evident early in his career. While he already had notable movies like Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" in his CV by 2011, that year was when he finally landed his major breakthrough role in the aforementioned "X-Men: First Class," the psychotherapist drama "A Dangerous Method," and, of course, "Shame," which earned him numerous awards and nominations.

Apart from its quality as a movie, "Shame" is notorious for featuring a full-frontal Fassbender nude scene, which is something that's fairly rare for male stars of his caliber. As it happens, this rarity was part of what inspired him to do the scene. The other part was ... his mother.

Normally, getting naked in front of the camera might seem like something that an actor explicitly wants to avoid discussing with their parents, but this evidently doesn't apply to Fassbender. In fact, if his 2011 interview with Vulture is any indication, the star was motivated to do the "Shame" nude scene by his mother's constant annoyance about the lack of such moments in films. "It just baffles me: Women can parade around naked all the time, but the guy conveniently has his pants on," Fassbender said while discussing the scene. "I remember my mom always complaining about that to me, saying, 'This is such bulls***, it's always the women who are naked' ... so I did this one for you, Mom!"

Though Michael Fassbender agreed to perform nude in "Shame," he was thankful that he didn't need to dwell on filming the scene. "We moved very fast," he said of the experience of making the movie in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. "We shot it in 25 days, so I kind of had to get over it and get on with it." Fassbender also noted that his father actually saw the movie at the Venice Film Festival and was extremely proud of him. 

While Fassbender didn't elaborate on what his inspirational mother had to say on the subject of her son's full-frontal nudity, the actor made clear who he'd take to the Academy Awards ceremony with him should he be nominated for his work in "Shame." "It would just be a bonus, but of course I would take my mom down the red carpet," Fassbender said. While he didn't get an Oscar nomination for the movie, he did make good on his promise in 2014 when he got the best supporting actor nod for "12 Years a Slave."