Press
Last Update
- June 21th, 2003
People: Christian
Bale
Tom Dawson, Total Film Magazine, 1998.
First he was. Then
he wasn't. Now he just might. Christian Bale was pencilled in
to play 'American Psycho''s Patrick Bateman, a schizoid yuppie
serial killer who tortures his prey with power drills, pliers
and starving rodents. Then Ladyboy Leo was mooted for Brett Easton
Ellis' sickening flip-side of the '80s Dream. Possibly...
"The director
Mary Harron asked me to do it last August and we've been preparing
since then," says Bale. "Then recently the financiers
decided to chuck $21 million at Leonardo DiCaprio to do it."
Since then DiCaprio has reportedly declined, opting for Danny
Boyle's big-screen take on Alex Garland's novel 'The Beach'. But
no word yet on who'll be Bateman. "I don't know what's going
to happen at the moment. Nobody's made a definite decision. Somebody
told me it was career suicide, but I know it's one of the best
parts I've ever been offered."
Bale's career was kick-started
with a "best part": at 14 the Bournemouth schoolboy
took the lead in Spielberg's 'Empire of the Sun', the loose adaptation
of writer J.G Ballard's Far Eastern adolescence during World War
Two. He still receives Christmas and birthday cards from Spielberg
and has "very good memories of making the film, although
it does seem a lifetime ago."
Less enjoyable was
the worldwide publicity tour: "It changed everything. It
turned me into a bit of recluse. I didn't want to work after that
for some time. I just wanted to get the hell away from it and
not have things written about me. I didn't realise that I was
going to do interviews day after day."
Then came the lull:
Bale dropped out of sixth-form college and headed off to America
as "there wasn't very much going on here for a young actor
and there was in the States." He's had an acclaimed small
role here ('The Secret Agent'), a good part there ('Portrait of
a Lady' and 'Little Women') and a couple of musical turkeys ('Newsies'
and 'Swing Kids'). But little else of real note.
This is the year he
hopes to change that. He's starring in glam-rock paean 'Velvet
Goldmine' with Ewan McGregor and Eddie Izzard. Then there's the
recently released 'Metroland', a drama that allows Bale to show
his versatility by playing character Chris across three time periods:
1963, 1968 and 1977.
"It was the fastest
film I've ever made. It only took 27 days, we did three big scenes
every day and I was in every one. What I like about 'Metroland'
is that it shows how, when you're younger, it seems there's only
one option. But the older you get, as Chris discovers, then the
more you see the alternatives and the more you question who you
are. You often see the teenager in films as being the troubled,
mixed-up one and later they know who they are. In 'Metroland'
it's the opposite."
Bale's abiding
memory of the shoot was the sub-zero temperatures, since 'Metroland''s
production schedule also coincided with the second coldest Parisian
winter this century. "For the scene by Notre Dame my jaw
froze up. I couldn't speak properly. Between takes I was wrapped
up like Jimmy Savile at the end of the marathon. I looked like
a baked potato."
Source - The
Bale Collection