Press
Last Update
- June 21th, 2003
What's The
Boy Playing At?
Liese Spencer, The Independent, 1998.
Drew Barrymore, River
Phoenix, Macaulay Culkin: everyone knows what happens to child
actors. Moppets grow up into monsters, with acne and weight problems.
They drink and take drugs. They go through a painful, public puberty,
then wind up on the video shelf. Or lying dead outside the Viper
Room. So what happened to the archetypal "Brit-packer",
Christian Bale?
By rights, the precociously
talented 13-year-old star of Spielberg' s Empire of the Sun should
have slipped into obscurity years ago. Instead, with leading roles
in a forthcoming adaptation of Julian Barnes's novel 'Metroland',
and Todd Hanes's sumptuous glam rock extravaganza 'Velvet Goldmine',
the actor - now 23 - shows no sign of burning out.
"Don't ask me
about selling out," he grins. "The first thing I did,
I sold out. It was a Lenor advert, when I was eight years old.
I was one of those annoying kids who peek around the washing-machine
with their dirty football boots." Young Bale pocketed pounds
80, bought "a pair of DMs and a Rubic Snake", and never
looked back.
Of course, there have
been a few flops along the way (the musicals 'Newsies' and 'Swing
Kids' are best forgotten) but Bale's cinematic coming of age has
been surprisingly smooth. Judicious supporting roles in 'Henry
V', 'Little Women' and 'Portrait of a Lady' built his reputation
as a serious actor while establishing him as the thinking girl's
pin-up. He is inundated by "Baleheads"; the actor's
website is one of the most popular on the Internet, rivaled only
by that of Leonardo DiCaprio's.
Cyber-rivalry between
the two ex-child stars recently erupted into the real world, when
Bale found his lead role in a forthcoming adaptation of Bret Easton
Ellis's American Psycho threatened by the Titanic star. Still
waiting to discover which will get to shred their poster-boy image
by playing the Wall Street serial killer Patrick Bateman, Bale
must content himself with the more proscribed rebellions essayed
in his upcoming releases.
In 'Metroland', Bale
plays Chris, a sixth-form rebel who teams up with his best friend
to bait bowler-hatted members of the bourgeoisie before settling
back into suburban comfort with wife Emily Watson. 'Velvet Goldmine',
meanwhile, sees his newspaper journalist Arthur researching a
retrospective feature on glam rock and unearthing memories of
his own teen flirtation with Seventies glitterball androgyny.
Be-flared, and with some of the worst sideburns this side of Slade,
Bale teeters precariously through the flashbacks on stacked soles,
before enjoying a climactic post-concert night of passion with
Ewan McGregor's American rock god.
Bale has never had
much need to rail against conformity. As the son of an ex-airline
pilot and a circus dancer, he says, the most rebellious thing
could have done was to "stick on a shirt and tie and go to
work in a bank". Perhaps that is why he is "perversely
drawn" to suburbanites such as Chris and Arthur. "I'm
attracted to characters who appear to be passive observers, who
aren't obviously interesting."
Less boy-next-door
than budding Bohemian-on-the-move, the teenage Bale may never
have languished in suburban ennui but, he says, "there were
times as a family when we ended up in very small places and there
would be that fear of where the hell are you going to next, and
what's going to happen? I suppose the difference was that it was
never boredom. It was never a fear of nothing's going to happen."
Bale's relaxed upbringing
has proved to be a good preparation for the vicissitudes of the
acting profession, but it sometimes got him into trouble at school.
"Basically, I'd turn up late every day. I remember the teacher
saying, 'One day, Christian,you're going to an interview and they're
going to ask to see your school registration, and when they see
all your "lates" on it, they're going to think you're
unreliable and you're not going to get the job'." Bale smirks
at the memory, as well he might. It is certain that Spielberg
did not ask to see his registration card before choosing him from
4,000 other boys to play the lead in Empire of the Sun.
For his part, Bale
was singularly unawed by his director and co-star. "At that
age you really don't give a shit. 'John Malkovich. Who? Spielberg,
so what?' You're fearless, you know? So it was incredibly simple.
There was no sense of competition, things which, as you get older,
start creeping into your mind and making your performances worse."
Only after he returned
home did Bale begin to feel the pressures of his new-found celebrity.
"I was living in Bournemouth and suddenly everybody knew
who I was. I remember sitting in this cafe with some friends and
this girl came up, who obviously didn't recognise me, and started
going on about how she was going out with Christian Bale. I'd
go down the public toilets and see things written about me on
the wall. Guys would start fights with me. The local paper took
pictures of me getting back from school [he laughs, and mimes
flinching from the paparazzi], then wrote features about how I
wouldn't open a girls' school fete. I just felt a dick, you know?
I was 14; I didn't want to stand there next to the mayor with
a big pair of scissors, but they started saying I was big-headed,
that I'd forgotten where I'd come from." He snorts. "I
didn't come from there, anyway."
A decade later, Bale
puts his survival down to the fact that he never traded on a cuddly
persona. These days he lives in Los Angeles, where he avoids glitzy
Hollywood parties and premieres, preferring to surf, or see friends.
"You do meet some interesting people at those things, but
if you go to too many you start losing sight of what you came
here for."
In his personal life,
Bale is currently enjoying being single. "I find it impossible
to conceive of spending a whole day with somebody, let alone getting
married" he says. "Between 15 and 21, I was with one
girl. All my friends were running around, and then when we split
up, some of my friends were getting married or moving in with
each other, and I was like, 'yeah, but I've never done any of
that other stuff'. So I need to get some of that out of my system."
Professionally, Bale
has things to get out of his system too. "Getting shagged"
by Ewan McGregor in 'Velvet Goldmine' is certainly a step away
from that boy-next-door image ("What can I say? He never
writes, he never calls. It's quite upsetting.") but whether
Bale will get the chance to make the definitive break with his
schoolboy persona by playing an American Psycho remains to be
seen.
'Velvet Goldmine'
previews at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 16 August;
'Metroland' is released on 18 August.
Source - The
Bale Collection