Señor Interviewed by GQ Magazine
Plagiarizing this post.
You rescued the Batman franchise from spoof by giving us a dark, even dislikable Bruce Wayne. Is Christian Bale now the go-to guy when an action franchise needs a booster shot of serious?
Look, that’s laughable. How serious can a movie about time-traveling robots be? You want it to be cool and fun.
Don’t do that. Don’t apologize for being a serious guy. You’re the first actor playing Batman to understand that he’s as anarchic and freakish as his enemies.
It’s true. I do like taking stuff seriously that a lot of people look at as nonsense. I enjoy the insanity of that. And I like the commitment that is needed for that. But this is a movie about time-traveling robots. I guess I’m always wary of this bullshit where people are makin’ it sound like what you do is far more impressive than it actually is. Everyone always tells you that you’re the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they’re the only one that can do it right. But when they’re talking to you, you’re always the Best Actor of Your Generation.
Actually, GQ has determined that you are the Third-Best Actor of Your Generation.
Thank you.
So who is John Connor?
Well, he’s not a freak like Bruce Wayne. There’s nothing pathological about him. He has a burden. He knows he’s to be the savior of mankind. J.C., right? In early versions of the script, they had all these weird paganistic amulets and talismans all over me. I told ’em to get rid of that crap. John Connor is all about utility: “There is no fate but what you make.” As far as playing him, I thought of it mainly in terms of his mom. He’s got this mad dog of a mom who everybody thinks is crazy but whose prophecies turn out to be true. I felt that a lot of her ferocity and recklessness had to be passed down.
Would you have unleashed the Rant as intensely, if at all, had you been playing someone other than John Connor?
Of course not. And it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been playing that scene, for Christ’s sake, between John Connor and his wife, which is probably the most intense one in the movie.
I’ve been wondering if you’re so Methody that when you kept yelling, What don’t you fucking understand? the question between the lines wasDon’t you fucking understand that by walking in front of the lights, you’re putting the survival of the human race at stake?
[an irritated sigh] I’d definitely say that that guy who was yelling was at least half John Connor, and the rest was Christian Bale.
Save for a few British inflections in those four minutes of sustained screaming, the Rant occurred in your Americanized John Connor accent. Did you use that voice off-camera throughout filming?
I do that because I’m just not very good at switching between two voices. If I had the talent to turn it on and off on cue, I would. But I don’t, so I have to maintain. Otherwise I’m aware that I’m “doing an accent” whenever I’m filming, instead of just speaking. Hey, listen, I don’t make any excuses. None of it is excusable. You know, I feel I already said everything about this that needs to be said when I called up the radio station.
[Four days after the Rant (just audio, regrettably) became public, Bale phoned the Kevin & Bean show on KROQ in Los Angeles. After telling the hosts that during an otherwise “miserable” week, their Rant-related riffing had made him laugh, Bale launched into a ten-minute apology so abject that it might better be described as an autovivisection.]
In a way, your apology was as intense as the original tirade. You nailed that apology, man.
Oh, really? I didn’t listen to it.
It was like, What don’t you fucking understand? I’m APOLOGIZING!
Yeah. Right.
Do people now regard you differently? You know, Oooh, there’s Christian Bale. Careful!
Come on. No.
What’s your favorite Christian Bale Rant dance remix or mash-up?
A friend sent me one. They did a bloody good job! I’ve gotta say, what a great impulse, you know? To take something ugly like that and make it into a dance? That’s a wonderful thing.
Have you seen the mash-up with you and the kid who’s just come from the dentist?
No.
You will go home after this interview and plug in “Christian Bale David Dentist” on YouTube.
Hey, look, this was not a little kid. This was a full-grown man, much bigger than me. There was no bullying going on. He was capable of dealing with it. He did. We reconciled within half an hour.
The bodybuilding and unbuilding you’ve done for your roles is alarming-the former all the more so for its being accomplished without any animal protein.
Actually, I’m in and out of the vegetarianism now. But yeah, the majority of the building up you’re talking about was done when I was still a vegetarian.
When did you fall off the wagon?
Just after I’d completed American Psycho [for which Bale, as the preening sociopath Patrick Bateman, got furiously ripped].
Dietary reasons? Or something to do with the character?
I was up in Toronto and went to see that movie Life Is Beautiful. By myself. And when I came out, I had a craving for blood unlike anything I had ever experienced since I decided to go vegetarian at the age of 7. It was a compulsion. It was undeniable. I went to several restaurants, one right after the other, and got the biggest, bloodiest steaks I could get my hands on. It was the first time I had tasted flesh in almost twenty years.
Life Is Beautiful.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
You once described what you did for The Machinist-starving off a third of your body-as “calming.” Can you elaborate?
I guess you just sort of have to focus on other…pleasures than food. So you focus on things of the mind. It really is almost mind control. And I found that very calming. Usually, you’re getting nervous energy from what you’re taking into your body. Since I wasn’t putting anything in, I was left in a low-energy state. I didn’t even have the energy to sleep much at all, if that doesn’t sound too strange. But that absence of energy was replaced with an ability to focus in a very slow and steady way for hours and hours. Physically, I was incredibly relaxed-I really didn’t have a choice-but mentally very acute. It was very nice to be in that state while it lasted. My family enjoyed that one as well, after they got over the horror of looking at me.
You enjoyed it because…?
It was uncluttered. The Machinist changed me. I learned that I really enjoy, literally, not saying a damned word for days at a time, except for what was in the scene. Whole days of…nothing. Just…standing still. I know a lot of people found it bizarre, because they’d be standing right next to me thinking, Why aren’t we talking? What’s going on? Hours would pass and I wouldn’t say a word, not even to Brad [Anderson], the director. And then it would be like, All right, I think I heard “Action.” Talk now. The purity of that, the satisfaction. Now I fall asleep on sets all the time. I’ve done it in the middle of scenes where they’ve had to shake me because I’ve missed my cues.
Really?
In Batman Begins, in the first scene I had with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, I fell asleep. In the scene, I was meant to be waking up, so I laid down and just fell asleep. And I didn’t hear “Action.” So Michael and Morgan were talking, and I was supposed to join in. I woke up with Michael Caine poking me in the ribs and going, [pitch-perfect Michael Caine accent] “Look at ’at! ’E’s bloody fallen asleep, ’asn’t ’e? ’E’s bloody fallen asleep!”
You’re a nice guy, Christian. You’re a nice guy. But seriously, man, you and me, we’re fuckin’ done professionally.
[Bale issues a half smile and a nod to acknowledge that the shot is legal.]
That anti-movie-star sentiment is funny coming from someone who’s now carrying two of the biggest action-movie franchises on the planet.
Yeah, I’m perverse. I know.
Which pre-Brando, pre-Method actors do you most admire?
I don’t have any answer for that. I watch so few movies. I didn’t get into this because I love movies. I got into it because I love putting myself in other people’s shoes and investigating.
Have you ever considered comedy?
[defensively] I think American Psycho is a very funny movie.
Right. Let’s end on that.
No, wait-can I say something? I want to say that I’ve got this long history of just, I can’t stand havin’ my photo taken. Can’t fuckin’ stand it. Which is why in half the photos you see of me, I look like I was gettin’ a tetanus injection when they took the picture. Okay? And there was a [fashion] campaign during The Dark Knight in which they used me, in which I had no fuckin’ say-so. I would never have done that had I had any fuckin’ say-so.
Okay.
This campaign-it wasn’t Batman. It was Bruce Wayne. I said, “Look, that’s Bruce Wayne in that suit. He’s no different than Christian Bale in a suit except for he’s got stuff, goo, in his hair, okay?” I just want to go on record as saying I did nothing for that. In fact every time I saw it anywhere, I felt nauseous.
Okay.
What I’m tellin’ you is that I will not ever be a model. If I’m ever modeling, you’ll know I really fucking need the money. Okay?
You got that?
Full interview ovah nya.