Press
Last Update
- June 21th, 2003
Christian Coalition
Jason Cochran, Entertainment Weekly, 1996
Followers
of the sexy Little Women star flock to cyberspace to spread the
word.
If the internet
is the ultimate democracy, Christian Bale has been elected its
biggest star.
Don't believe
it? Log on and learn: On America Online, correspondence about
him is filling a 12th Movie Talk folder, while Mel Gibson scores
three and Chris O'Donnell two. On CompuServe, Bale dominates eight
files. In March, the Usenet newsgroup alt.movies.christian-bale
launched, though postings about him pop up on nine others. And
the home page of the Christian Bale Fan Club (www.interlog.com/~cbale)
reported more than 76, 000 hits one week in August, while fellow
boys celebre Will Smith and Ethan Hawke don't even have official
sites. In short, Baleheads have become an online phenomenon.
Even if you don't know
Christian Bale by name, chances are you'd recognize him on screen.
Although the modest 22-year-old actor grew up in Britain and Portugal,
his is the old tale of Hollywood fortune: Cast at 10 in The Nerd
in London's West End, he jumped to the NBC miniseries Anastasia:
The Mystery of Anna, starring Amy Irving--at the time Mrs. Steven
Spielberg--and by 13 he landed one of the most auspicious screen
debuts in memory, as a young World War II prisoner in Spielberg's
1987 Empire of the Sun. After Kenneth Branagh tapped him for Henry
V, Bale scored meaty roles with Charlton Heston (Treasure Island),
Disney (Newsies) and (Pocahontas), and Winona Ryder (Little Women).
Unlike the young Hollywood
of the gossip pages, Bale eschews the glam Viper Room scene. Instead,
he shares a Southern California home with one of his three sisters,
Louise, 24, and his father/manager, David (his parents are divorced;
his mother lives in England).
And in that Hollywood-bucking
European tradition, Bale won't hire a PR flack. "I have a
fear of being boring," the actor says. "The more high-profile
I get, the less I can surprise people anymore. I've managed it
very well. Nobody has a clue who I am, so it worked."
This modesty--plus
the tease of inaccessibility--is just part of what endears him
to Baleheads. And the CBFC isn't just wired, it's electric. "When
we saw the range of Christian's talents and how little coverage
he's been getting, we, as a fan network, saw the gap between hype
and reality," says Harrison Cheung, 30, who, as the leader
of the Toronto-based CBFC, devotes much of his free time to building
buzz in cyberspace, where speech is cheap and loud.
Last year, fans (who,
Cheung says, skew towards students) canvassed newsgroups and raised
more than $1,000 to "adopt" a baby gorilla, named Nahimana,
with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, one of Bale's favorite charities.
The fans have since morphed into his de facto publicist, hounding
magazines, including this one, to score him press--and sniffing
for projects. So far, the CBFC has bombarded executive producer
Kate Capshaw (who's now Mrs. Spielberg) with pleas to cast Bale
in DreamWorks' The Love Letter and mounted similiar charges on
the authors and producers of Snow Falling on Cedars and The Secret
History--with yet-to-be-determined success. Have the Baleheads
stumbled upon the future of fandom? "It isn't something fan
clubs commonly do," admits Linda Kay, president of the National
Association of Fan Clubs. Most casting agents pooh-pooh this kind
of effort (says one: "Does it matter? I'd say a resounding
no"), but it's not like Hollywood to ignore a groundswell.
Besides, someone's noticing: When The Secret Agent, in which Bale
plays a mentally handicapped young man, premiered at the Toronto
Film Festival in September, Fox/Searchlight made sure Cheung was
among the invitees.
"I'm not at all
surprised about his huge following," says Christopher Hampton,
who directed The Secret Agent and wrote the screenplay for The
Secret History. "He's very personable, and he's very serious
about his work." And it's paying off in higher-profile projects:
Bale plays the doting Edward Rosier opposite Nicole Kidman's Isabel
Archer in the adaptation of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady,
directed by Jane Campion (The Piano), which opens in December.
For his part,
Bale's not complaining. Although he hasn't seen the website, due
to a faulty computer ("We just tend to punch it, and shout
at it"), he keeps in touch with Cheung, supplies the CBFC
with tidbits--and has even lurked during some of the Baleheads'
gossipy AOL chats. "They were talking endlessly about this
scene in Little Women in which Winona and I kiss, and about how
there's a little line of spit between our mouths," Bale laughs.
"I find it really funny, and I appreciate it. I sort of feel
like I'm creating the Mob or something. People are going to start
getting snakes through their post (the mail) if they don't give
me a part." Maybe not, but with secret success stories like
Bale's lurking online, Hollywood might want to start checking
it's E-mail.
Source - The
Bale Collection