The latest film by the Turner Prize-winning artist and now acclaimed film-maker Steve McQueen is an electrifying snapshot of the life of Brandon, a sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender. Shame (released this week) is McQueen’s second feature and follows his 2008 debut Hunger, about the Irish Republican hunger-striker Bobby Sands, which also stars Fassbender.
McQueen, 42, is west London-born and Amsterdam-based. Intense and passionate, he has a big and bearish presence, and though initially rather brusque, he is none the less in buoyant mood the day I talk to him at the Soho Hotel; the night before, Fassbender had won another award for his performance in Shame, this time from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association — only a few months after receiving best-actor honours at the Venice Film Festival. ‘I’m meeting him tonight,’ McQueen says. ‘He’s going to win a lot.’
After studying at Chelsea School of Art, McQueen attended Goldsmiths College, where he made his first short films.
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