The "X-Men: First Class" and "Inglourious Basterds" star has just stepped off the plane from the Venice Film Festival, where he's promoting two films, not one. Those would be "Shame," director Steve McQueen's hugely anticipated follow to "Hunger" — another virtuoso Fassbender project — and Steven Soderbergh's "A Dangerous Method," in which Fassbender stars as Carl Jung alongside Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley.

Oh, and he's had a busy summer in the Scottish highlands filming Ridley Scott's science fiction epic "Prometheus." Now the German-born Irish actor is back in London for his latest film "Jane Eyre," where his brooding and doleful Mr. Rochester runs smack into Mia Wasikowska's timid but fiercely feministic Jane.

"I started reading, I was like 'God for me he comes across as very bipolar,'" Fassbender told The Associated Press. "He can be so distant, and sort of closed off and isolated really, even in a room full of people, and then he could be so connected and so sort of emotionally excitable, I thought that was something that could be played with." Set in Yorkshire, England, in the early 19th century, Charlotte Bronte's classic tale of the young governess who falls hopelessly in love with her employer has been told countless times. In addition to scores of TV, radio and stage adaptations, there have been least 17 movies, with the first full-length feature film dating back to 1914.

Until now, the most famous "Jane Eyre" was the 1943 film starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine, but American director Cary Fukunaga's latest version may challenge that status. Fukunaga's film opened in the US in March to widespread critical acclaim and is now enjoying another round of positive reviews from British critics.