The Actor Spotlight: Christian Bale

John Murphy

Co-founder of Gateway Apps, LLC., a software development firm specializing in mobile application development and web applications. In his spare time, John loves watching movies and writing about them in an amateurish fashion.

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4 Responses

  1. Travis McClain says:

    I recently watched American Psycho with Amy Heckerling’s commentary track and didn’t get the sense from her remarks that Bale had really gone that deeply into character when not actively filming. In fact, she mentioned one day of shooting where he could be found on the set chumming casually wearing just a strategically placed sock and then he’d go right back into shooting on command.

    Heckerling did acknowledge the homework he had done in planning the notorious threesome scene, going so far as to sketch out position ideas and improvising the moment where he looks at his own reflection and kisses his bicep. I read the novel for the first time late last year before re-watching the movie and found myself marveling at how much of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel is still conveyed despite being excised. For my money, Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman is textbook perfect. It is alternately sinister, foreboding, and perversely hilarious, and never once does he strike a false note.

  2. John Murphy says:

    I agree whole-heartedly. American Psycho was, I think, the second Christian Bale film I had ever seen. The first being Batman Begins. I was floored by his performance. It was such a departure from his work on Batman Begins and I really started to wonder if this man was actually a little insane.

    It’s interesting to find out that he was not that deep in the character, yet was able to accomplish such an accurate portrayal of the character in the book.

  3. Travis McClain says:

    The first movie I saw with Bale was Empire of the Sun though at the time only his family knew who he was. That was a VHS rental sometime in the 90s for me, by which point the movie was probably about a decade old. I saw American Psycho the first time around the time I heard he was cast as Batman, and it was actually this performance that gave me a lot of hope for his take on the character. If I were to make one suggestion to anyone making a movie with Bale in the future, it would be to be very conservative with his dialog. I think he’s most impressive in those moments where he hasn’t a line to say, but still inhabits the role in quiet. He’s very expressive, but never in a hammy way.

  1. January 25, 2011

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Flickchart, Raul M. (JRM). Raul M. (JRM) said: RT @flickchart: The Actor Spotlight: Christian Bale – A closer look at Bale's top 10 films on Flickchart http://bit.ly/gwn6Im […]