Praise for Christian Bale
“When [Cheung] refers to himself as Bale’s majordomo, he is not kidding.”
—N.F. Mendoza, former journalist at
Los Angeles Times, People, TV Guide
“This intimate and revealing biography of Christian Bale is full of details few people know about Hollywood’s most-lauded Batman, and how a child actor—by harnessing his fans on the Internet—became the star he is today.”
—BraveNewHollywood.com
“Harrison Cheung’s groundbreaking work in Internet marketing during the mid-’90s established Christian Bale as the first major web celebrity, making my work as a journalist that much easier. Thanks to Harrison, many a major publication, including USA TODAY and the Chicago Tribune, took my profile pitches on this brilliant but largely unknown actor—because of his cyber-popularity.”
—Moira McCormick, journalist
“The book is good—a fun, informative read.”
—Christopher Heard, author and film historian
Christian
Bale
The Inside Story of
the Darkest Batman
HARRISON CHEUNG AND NICOLA PITTAM
BENBELLA BOOKS, INC. | DALLAS, TEXAS
FOR DISRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA ONLY.
Copyright © 2012 by Harrison Cheung and Nicola Pittam
Introduction © 2012 by Harrison Cheung and Nicola Pittam
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
BenBella Books, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
978-1-936661-77-0
Editing by Erin Kelley
Copyediting by Eric Wechter
Proofreading by Michael Fedison and Chris Gage
Cover design by Kit Sweeney
Text design and composition by Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Printed by Bang Printing
Distributed by Perseus Distribution
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Contents
Introduction
1 Empire of the Son
2 Father Figure
3 Bale-Out
4 Newsies
5 Christian Fail
6 Baleheads Begin
7 Little Women, Big Dreams
8 Golden Years
9 Before Batman, There Was Bateman
10 Post-Psychotic
11 An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
12 A Balance of Darkness and Light
13 Harsh Times
14 The Curse of Batman—It’s No Joker
15 The Fighter
16 Award Season
Appendix A
Appendix B
Acknowledgments
“I don’t want people to know me.”
—Christian Bale, Esquire, December 2010
“The truth will set you free. But first, it’ll piss you off.”
—Gloria Steinem
“We know very little about Christian Bale the man because he is intensely private. That is his right, and should be respected, within reason. After all, any serious movie actor who doesn’t realize he’s choosing the most public of careers when he signs on ought to have his head examined.”
—John Farr, Huffington Post
Introduction
Here’s how it is. I’m always asked two questions about Christian Bale. One: What’s he like? Two: How did I end up working for him for almost a decade?
Christian is one of the most secretive and talented stars in Hollywood with a reputation for an incredibly volatile temper and numerous eccentricities. Although pop psychologists can debate nature versus nurture, the fact remains that Christian is a former child actor with an unusual family upbringing and circumstance who grew into a man with a deep need for privacy. In many ways, he is also a man without a country—an actor in Hollywood who’s always reminded that he’s British—the first foreigner ever to play the iconically American role of Batman. These factors are just part of his development that would cultivate an explosive temper that would rival Mel Gibson’s.
My involvement with Christian was initially a fan’s dream. I’m delighted to tell the story of how I met Christian and got involved with his career because one of Christian’s agents had warned me never to tell anyone. The agent thought our story would empower and encourage fans, and that was something he was absolutely against because like any good Hollywood player, he was loath to acknowledge any cultural influences aside from his own.
The influence of The Fan has always been underestimated, indeed scorned in the corner offices of the talent agencies. Why? The agents and the studios want to be the sole influencers of what you watch, rent, wear, and buy. However, when fan power is orchestrated, coordinated, and directed effectively, great things can happen. Star Trek? Family Guy? Firefly? Betty White’s Facebook campaign to host Saturday Night Live? Justin Bieber’s discovery on YouTube? There are so many examples of fan-power saving a series, influencing casting, and championing a book. So now you get the limos at Comic-Con—it’s Hollywood’s begrudging acknowledgment that fans matter.
I started off as a fan of Christian Bale’s. I think there are different levels of fandom. You first notice an actor. Then you make a point of watching whatever movie that actor is in. Then there’s a big shift to activism—you want all your friends to watch him. You write a fan letter. You meet up with other fans to share experiences. But I managed to reach another level that few fans can achieve: I had the opportunity to directly influence Christian’s career.
I ended up taking care of many aspects of Christian’s life—as his assistant, publicist, and marketer. I read scripts, followed book projects, got him press coverage, handled his Internet marketing, and replied to his fan mail. I looked after his house and his pets when he was away on location. I took care of his father, his finances, his immigration issues. I had to laugh when people would describe me as the real-life Alfred to his Bruce Wayne.
Through Christian’s ups and down, I saw a very talented person struggle to survive in the entertainment industry. Christian was the ultimate Hollywood outsider—a former child actor who was pressured into show business by a determined single parent; a British teen reluctantly relocated to a new country, stuck with the burden of being a foreigner, and both a failed “Disney” and “Spielberg” kid. He dealt with soul-tearing family conflicts and betrayals and faced confidence-shattering discrimination and stereotyping. It’s no wonder that he developed his ability into transforming himself physically for different roles. I could see that it was his way of coping, of running away from who he really was.
This book is Christian Bale’s biography, but it’s also the untold story of a child actor and how he became the Internet’s first star. It’s the true story of how a British actor got to play a quintessentially American antihero—Batman. There is no other actor in Hollywood in recent times who owes so much to the contribution of his fans.
To the Baleheads, past and present, this book is dedicated to you and what we’ve collectively accomplished. I remember a certain Christian Bale
movie poster and its tagline that empowered us all:
A Thousand Voices. A Single Dream.
Harrison Cheung
[1]
Empire of the Son
“Difficult boy.”
—Empire of the Sun
“The truth is this: if I didn’t have to do a single interview, I never would.”
—Christian Bale, Tribune Media, July 10, 1992
“Empire of the Sun changed my life quite considerably and I didn’t like it one bit.”
—Christian Bale, In Focus, July 10, 1992
The thin boy was sitting quietly, staring intently at an orange he held in his left hand. Across the table sat a seasoned journalist with a tape recorder and a notepad, pen in hand, hoping to continue his interrogation.
Whenever the reporter asked him a question, the boy absently muttered a tired “yes” or “no” until his eyes wandered to the tray on the table covered with remnants of his lunch. He slowly fingered different pieces of cutlery, finally settling on a knife. As the reporter looked on, he began stabbing at the orange, reveling in the spritz of orange rind and the happy scent of citrus, which began to perfume the air. To the boy, this was something tangible and real—something he could do and feel while he ignored any further questions.
Exasperated, the reporter got up and stormed out. This interview was over but the boy, still fixated on destroying his orange, savored the sticky wetness dribbling through his fingers.
A worried publicist ran into the room. “Christian, is everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes. I’d like to go to the bathroom,” he announced. Christian then stood up purposefully, wiping orange zest residue off his trousers. He silently walked past the woman and headed out the door and down the hallway.
The woman watched the retreating figure, concerned and troubled at the turn of events. A number of journalists had complained at how poorly their interviews had gone, and Christian’s next interviewer was waiting patiently for his allotted appointment.
Instead of returning from the bathroom, Christian decided to make a break for the elevator doors. He was soon walking out through the hotel lobby and heading down the Champs-Elysées. With each step, he felt a weight being lifted off him and happily immersed himself in the anonymity of the noisy streets where everyone was speaking a language he could not understand.
It was 1988 and fourteen-year-old Christian Bale was on his very first press junket for the Warner Brothers film Empire of the Sun. As Empire Magazine wrote in 1998, Christian “was rude, gave monosyllabic answers and generally proved as uncooperative as possible. His reputation for being difficult was born.”
As the next interviewer lost his patience, it soon became apparent that Christian was going to be late for this interview. And the next one. And the two after that. Word would soon spread throughout the hotel that the young star of Steven Spielberg’s latest movie was missing.
While a small posse of worried publicists and personal assistants started combing through the streets of Paris, Christian was contentedly sitting in the grass in a park, enjoying the cool weather and the solitude.
Back at the hotel, the publicist had alerted Christian’s older sister Sharon, who was just seventeen, and she in turn anxiously called their father, David, who was back home in England. He would know what to do, she thought. He was the only one who could handle Christian.
“You must get a hold of Christian at once,” David hissed at his daughter. “Tell him he’s embarrassing Steven. He mustn’t do this to Steven!” David was emphatic, his voice edging up in panic. From the very first wonderful review of his only son’s major motion picture debut, the future looked absolutely bright. But to have Christian walking out on the all-too-crucial press junket would most certainly get back to Spielberg, and David was worried about Christian’s acting future, if word got out that he was throwing tantrums and being difficult.
Christian often tried to describe to me that time period—there was an incredible amount of pressure riding on his small shoulders. He enjoyed making movies, but the publicity junket made him miserable. It was the beginning of his severe dislike of the words “must” and “should.” He didn’t like being told what he should do or must do—unless it was coming from the director of a movie.
This wasn’t something I could understand easily. I always thought that if I had the good fortune of being a celebrity, I’d gladly deal with publicity. But then again, Christian was a child actor and he had a lot of people depending on him at a very early age.
Acting was not his chosen profession but an accident he had cheerfully stumbled into when he was eight years old. Acting was just something he played at, tagging along with his older sisters, Sharon and Louise, when they went to dance and acting workshops. Watching his sisters have fun, Christian jumped right in, glad for the creative outlet to make some noise, conjure up silly faces, and to run around the room. “It was better than just leaving him in the van,” explained David.
Christian told the Daily Mirror at the time: “I wasn’t really interested in acting till I went to see my sister Louise on stage in Bugsy Malone. I saw it 27 times and thought it looked fun.” Also starring in that 1983 production of Bugsy—a stage adaptation of the 1976 Alan Parker movie—was Catherine Zeta-Jones.
But now acting was set to be Christian’s profession and his family’s livelihood. Christian and his sisters were enrolled in acting workshops while they lived in Reading. Their classmates included Kate and Anna Winslet. Soon, casting agents were picking Christian over his sisters for small parts in television commercials for the now defunct Pac-Man cereal, which capitalized on the video game’s popularity in the 1980s, and he was paid £80 for a Lenor clothes conditioner commercial.
“I was one of those annoying kids who peeked around the washing-machine with their dirty football boots,” recalled Christian. “I was just eight years old at the time and I had to say: ‘Oh mummy, this smells nice.’” Still, movie acting was just a fantasy. Christian’s only ambition at the time was to be a Stormtrooper in a Star Wars movie.
Commercials gave way to small stage, television, and film roles. Within a space of two years, he had a bit part in the BBC miniseries Heart of the Country, based on the Fay Weldon novel. Then, Christian ended up making £12 a night, playing a “noisy, obnoxious American kid” in the West End comedy The Nerd, opposite comedian and Mr. Bean star Rowan Atkinson. He had a supporting role in The Land of Far Away, a children’s film based on a book by Astrid Lindgren, the well-known author of the Pippi Longstocking series. And he was crowned Tsarevich of Russia, as Alexei, in the NBC telefilm Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, opposite Amy Irving, who was then Mrs. Steven Spielberg.
When Spielberg was ready to cast the lead role in Empire of the Sun, a film based on the semiautobiographical novel by J.G. Ballard about his childhood in war-torn China, Amy suggested Christian. But Spielberg was not convinced. “Spielberg actually told me he didn’t like my performance in Anastasia,” Christian said. But the boy eventually won the role after many screen tests and readings. It took Spielberg almost seven months to cast the role, and choosing Christian ended up being a perfect casting decision that impressed Ballard when he visited the set.
David and Jenny Bale were thrilled when Christian landed the part. Christian later told Movieline that his father was preparing him for a life-changing experience: “Before we started, my dad told me: ‘This could be a fantastic experience, but it could also be the worst thing that could happen to you.’ There have been moments when I’ve wished it had never happened . . . You know, when you’re a teenager, you just want to be normal.”
It seems to me that Empire of the Sun was truly the last great American epic, lovingly crafted before today’s era of digital effects where crowds of hundreds can be digitally multiplied into hordes of thousands. The sixteen-week shoot involved 500 crew members and more than 15,000 extras. The film used real stunt pilots and real vintage World War II aircraft—not a computerized rendering of aerial ba
ttles as in Pearl Harbor or Independence Day. Shot on location in China and Spain, the film was Spielberg’s most ambitious project and an unusual subject matter for him at the time, because it was about the end of childhood—innocence brutally lost because of war. Empire of the Sun also happened to be the first major Hollywood production shot in China since the 1949 Communist revolution.
The subject matter was unique in many ways because it was set in Shanghai on the eve of World War II during the Sino-Japanese war—not an arena of the war familiar to American moviegoers but painfully known to my family history. I had lost my grandmother during the war, and it was practically a family ritual for my parents to recount the tales of growing up as a child in war-torn China.
Shanghai was the unfortunate first city in history to suffer the devastation of aerial bombardment. Christian played Jamie Graham, a privileged English schoolboy who, like J.G. Ballard, was born and raised in the British section of Shanghai. (Before World War II, Shanghai had a number of European enclaves.) During the Japanese invasion, Jamie is separated from his parents. He is captured and thrown into a Japanese concentration camp where he survives through ferocious skills he learns from two American prisoners.
When production began on Empire of the Sun, the cast had grown to include an impressive list of distinguished actors including Nigel Havers, Miranda Richardson, Joe Pantoliano, and John Malkovich. (It also happened to be Ben Stiller’s first movie role as “Dainty”—an imprisoned American!) But it was Christian who dominated the screen for the duration of the 154-minute film. It was a striking, career-making debut, and Christian’s performance was the heart and soul of the film. Unlike the typical cherubic child actor, Spielberg needed a child who could compellingly portray a concentration camp survivor.
Christian Bale Page 1