OVER THE PAST two decades and change—ever since getting his big break in HBO's limited series war epic Band of Brothers—Michael Fassbender has led a mighty impressive career. He's worked in major films made both with studios and independently, and has managed to collaborate with some of the greatest directors alive, including (but not limited to) Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott, Terrence Malick, and three with Steve McQueen. This fall alone, he's led a pair of films from two more filmmakers with singular visions, leading both David Fincher's The Killer and Taika Waititi's Next Goal Wins.

But when faced with his entire expansive career, there's one character the 46-year-old star would want to share a meal with: Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, the anti-hero/villain (depending who you ask) who he played in four X-Men films between 2011 and 2019. "[I would have] a few questions," he says in Men's Health's new "Eat Like" video with a laugh. "I would say Magneto."

His X-Men character (who has also been played by Sir Ian McKellen in the FOX X-Men series) is notorious for his friendship/rivalry with Professor X (played by both James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart) in the series; Magneto is the more violent and aggressive of the two, typically taking on a more antagonistic role in the fight for Mutant rights, while Professor X generally wants to avoid conflict. The relationship between the two is, in a way, at the very core of the X-Men story in general.

The X-Men movies aren't the only place where Fassbender ran into conflict, though. The first movie he made with the McQueen (a British filmmaker who won the Best Director Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, the movie that also earned Fassbender his first Oscar nomination) was 2008's Hunger; there he played Bobby Sands, a real-life Irish politician who went on a hunger strike while in prison.

For that role, he was incredibly hard on himself with a low calorie diet in order to lose weight. "Usually I'll sit between 72 kilos [158 pounds] and 74 [163 pounds]. When I did Hunger, the target was to get down to 58 kilos [127 pounds], which I did—that was over a 10 week period."

To get there, he began by limiting himself to 1,000 calories a day, which he stuck with for "about four weeks" before he began to plateau when his weight fell to 64 kilos [141 pounds]. At that point, he says, he dropped his caloric intake to only 600 calories per day: that consisted of "a tin of sardines, berries, and a handful of nuts a day."

Men's Health does not endorse this kind of extreme diet—and neither does Michael Fassbender. "I wouldn't do what I did for Hunger again," he says." I wouldn't do that to my body again."

For more on the two-time Oscar nominee's diet and health, check out Men's Health's latest "Eat Like" video above.