he gorgeous, smart, and wildly talented Vikander meets her on-screen husband, the gorgeous, smart, and wildly talented Fassbender. Is it any surprise what developed? Vikander was still feeling like a newcomer compared with Fassbender and remembers feeling “terrified and very alone” at the beginning of the shoot. As it happened, Fassbender had already been well aware of Vikander, having seen her dancing at a party at the Toronto Film Festival the year before. She quickly discovered that he wanted her help in finding his footing. “He was very sweet at letting me in. . . . He was like, ‘Can you please give me a note? What do you think I should do?’ It was such a sweet thing to kind of let me in.” It was little surprise to Cianfrance to see his two co-stars falling in love. “It wasn’t hard for me to see that the chemistry could be there, just knowing them as individuals,” he says. “What I saw was two great people who were so supportive of each other, who were really picking each other up, and pushing each other. . . . They were an undeniably good match and they pushed each other. . . . Michael and Alicia, they were like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. They were going to make one another better. And they were better together.” The real feelings invariably intensified the fictional romance. Even Fassbender, who’s abjectly reluctant to speak about his personal relationships, admits, “These things of course sort of spill through to what you’re doing.”
