Man Candy Mondays: Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender isn't a beefy muscleman. He's not hyper-masculine. He doesn't have long, flowing Samson locks or a super-hetero beard. But we want him. So badly. Like, now. Who is this guy, and why are we so attracted to him? Good question, actually. True, we watched him strip down to nothing in the sex thriller Shame and spank Keira Knightley while playing Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method. Now, he's made the leap to inarguable leading man in the summer blockbuster Prometheus. But despite his previous roles, one very specific thing speaks volumes about Michael Fassbender: In what is probably the most ringing endorsement of anyone's sex appeal ever, he's on many fans' short lists to play Christian Grey in the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey movie. Yep. He's sexy, all right.

His sex appeal is so raw, it's almost scary

Getting an eyeful of Fassy's generous package in Shame caused quite the stir among filmgoers — even George Clooney, who remarked at the Golden Globes, “I would like to thank Michael Fassbender for taking over the frontal nude responsibly that I had. Really Michael, honestly, you can play golf like this with your hands behind your back. Go for it, man, do it!"

But the size of what he has to offer isn't the sole reason why we find Michael so attractive. The way a man carries himself — particularly this man — goes farther toward stoking our imagination than physical endowment. Still, we're not exactly, um, disappointed by what he's packing.

GQ asked him what he makes of all of the fuss over that very specific body part of his:

"It's fun to a point... and after a certain point you worry that it kind of detracts from the movie. But there's nothing I can do. I just have to laugh it off. I can. Pretty much. Because I take my work seriously but I can't take myself too seriously. I'm in such a crazy privileged position — s***, this is the pinnacle of the dream when I was 17... Nobody wants to hear really how difficult it is."

Pardon us while we let the idea of a well-endowed, attractive and humble man wash over us. Ahhhh.

He plays superheroes as well as he does academics

He breathed life into the comic book character Magneto in last year's X-Men: First Class, and he's currently saving the planet onscreen in the sci-fi flick Prometheus. But he's also lent us an indelible image of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and embodied a sex addict named Brandon in Shame.

“I must admit — I initially thought it might be fun," he told W about Shame. "You hear ‘sex,’ and you think… sex! But this was definitely the hardest job I’ve done. I can usually shake a character off, but I couldn’t shake Brandon. He had no sensual enjoyment in his life, and since we filmed the movie so quickly, I found myself living in his skin. Keeping him close to me was exhausting, cold, horrible. As Brandon, I never ate. He had one container of Chinese food in his fridge. All that sex and he didn’t have any pleasure.”

“That sad container of noodles tells you more about Brandon than any nudity.”

We love it when our pieces of man candy come infused with a little bit of depth.

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Dipping his pen in the company ink, Fassbender recently said he is now dating his Shame costar, relatively unknown actress Nicole Beharie, 27, known for her roles in American Violet and The Good Wife.

But forget any notion of clandestine meetings after shooting: "Nothing happened while we were filming," he told GQ. "We started talking more on the promotion thing. So, yeah, it just sort of unfolded like that."

Nothing like a nice romantic surprise after a bout of hard work.

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