Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  Every day, David would serve Christian his breakfast in bed—a mug of hot tea, baked beans, scrambled eggs, and toast. “Who’s the greatest actor in the world?” David would cheerfully ask at the door. And a sleepy-eyed Christian would meekly reply: “I am! I am!” David happily performed this ritual until Christian married and moved out of that house at age twenty-five.

  “You have no idea how difficult it is to be an actor,” David would say to me. “My poor son faces rejection every day! His family must be positive and supportive. He must never be criticized!” David loved a pity party, I’d learn.

  In his early days in L.A., Christian did face a lot of competition. He was considered for many films, including: Alive, directed by Empire of the Sun producer Frank Marshall. But the part went to rival Ethan Hawke; two Ridley Scott projects, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and White Squall, which was down to Christian and Balthazar Getty; Scent of a Woman (lost to Chris O’Donnell); A Far Off Place (lost to Ethan Embry); and most disappointingly, This Boy’s Life, which Christian lost to rival Leonardo DiCaprio.

  Casting agents and producers had no doubt that Christian was a good actor, but in the early 1990s, they questioned whether he could convincingly play an American. There was the matter of physicality. Slender, pale Christian looked very English. The rosiness of his cheeks, Christian complained, was a genetic form of rosacea, common to those of Celtic background. Also, Christian was a British citizen, so producers would have to apply for work visas and have legitimate reasons as to why an American actor wouldn’t be an easier choice to hire for the role.

  Additionally, casting agents could hear that Christian spoke with a lisp, a product of his embarrassingly large overbite. In fact, Christian could bite his teeth together and stick his finger behind his top front two teeth. Christian would eventually have his teeth fixed for American Psycho, but until then, it was another issue that eroded Christian’s confidence. He continues to speak with a slight lisp to this day.

  Christian’s sharp-eyed fans, the Baleheads, noticed that he rarely smiled in photos. This was partly because of his dislike of publicity and partly a reflex that he had developed to avoid showing his teeth. The result was that Christian never looked particularly friendly in photos—a look that could be interpreted as overly serious, or intense.

  Said Christian about his serious countenance: “If I have to acknowledge a camera, I tend to look like I’m receiving an injection.”

  You can imagine that Christian was quite an uphill challenge for his agent to pitch: an actor who lisped, hated publicity, refused to smile, and was a paperwork-ridden foreign hire. To American producers, David pushed Christian’s Spielberg experience. To European producers, Christian’s British citizenship could satisfy any European investors’ quota for European talent.

  Christian decided it was racism, plain and simple. “Americans discriminate against the English. They are jealous, because any English actor can out-act an American. That’s why they deny me work.”

  While David was chasing after Christian’s opportunities, glued to the phone in his home office/bedroom, he expected daughter Louise to take care of the house. She dutifully tried to cook and clean for her father and brother (both hopeless in the kitchen), juggling her full-time schoolwork at El Camino College, along with her theater work, social life, and assorted waitressing jobs.

  David was a terrible cook. He only knew how to make scrambled eggs, beans, and toast. I once showed up for dinner where David’s idea of a main course was a nuked cauliflower with dribbles of Cheese Wiz.

  Christian was even more helpless in the kitchen. He once stuck a foil-wrapped potato in the microwave and jumped around frantically as sparks and arcing electricity crackled. It was easier for Christian to run across Sepulveda Boulevard to grab some take-out chicken from Koo Koo Roo’s. Or he could wait for Louise to cook something.

  Louise Tabitha Bale is only eighteen months older than Christian, but her hopes and dreams of a film career ended back in Bournemouth when a joint brother-sister project fell through. Right after the U.K. premiere of Empire of the Sun, The Sunday Express had excitedly proclaimed: “The brother and sister double act from Bournemouth are set to take Hollywood by storm.” But the movie never happened. Indeed, it was her interest in drama, dance, and theater workshops that got Christian involved in show business.

  When they were kids, Christian and Louise were practically like twins. David called Louise his “treasure” and called Christian “moosh.” He observed that brother and sister were like two peas in a pod, and they were inseparable growing up.

  Louise remembered fondly: “Christian and I played together a lot as kids. We often played with other kids on our street, and we played games like ‘Family’ where we would each take on a role of the member of a family, ‘Dad,’ ‘Mum,’ ‘Sister,’ etc. and re-enact little dramas. We also played in the dirt a lot, dug up worms, made mud pies, rode our bikes down to the local candy shop and we also played in the woods a lot because we grew up in remote areas.”

  Though Christian’s official bio says that he became interested in animal rights after reading Charlotte’s Web, it was actually Louise who had decided to become vegetarian at the tender age of nine. She recalled: “It was a book called The Peppermint Pig by Nina Bawden that I read when I was nine years old that affected me so deeply.”

  Though close in age, David noticed that brother and sister had different approaches to life. “Louise charges in to scare away the demons,” David would say. “While Christian creeps in to avoid them.”

  Eventually, I could see that Louise began to resent her pseudo-mother role, stuck with the cooking and cleaning and household chores. She and David argued often because David liked to drink and David could be an angry drunk. He was paranoid and critical about Louise’s dates and he often jumped to conclusions that any of Louise’s boyfriends who had any interest in show business were only interested in getting access to Christian to further their own careers.

  In Los Angeles where show business is the primary industry, this wasn’t necessarily a wrong conclusion. Siblings of celebrities often need to be wary of their friends and acquaintances’ motives. Some families who move to Hollywood are very generous with their connections, hoping that good schmoozing and networking would be good karma and benefit all. Others, like David, are highly suspicious, defensive, and possessive of every hard-earned lead.

  David would sigh: “My poor treasure works so hard with school and work, she’s a living saint!” But a minute later, David would hiss: “I don’t trust any of these boys that hang around Louise. She doesn’t realize that they’re just using her to get to my son.”

  Louise had dated a young filmmaker, Darren Doane, who asked Christian to appear in a short film project called Godmoney. Though the short was never completed, you can see Christian’s performance in the DVD of the full-length version of Godmoney as one of the extras. Christian and David were both unhappy that the footage was made public—the grungy performance of a smoking, scrawny, and shirtless Christian went against David’s image objectives for his son, and the incorporation of the footage in the DVD only solidified David’s suspicions of Louise’s friends.

  I got to witness firsthand Louise’s quiet strength and determination a number of times and I wondered how tough it must be for Louise to be Christian’s sister. At the Palm Springs Film Festival in 1996, David, Louise, and I stood in the theater lobby after a screening of Christian’s film Metroland. As the audience started streaming out, David proudly told people that it was his son who was the star of the movie. A number of people looked at Louise and asked her who she was.

  “I’m Christian’s sister,” she’d reply.

  “Why, you’re almost as cute as he is!” a couple said.

  “Don’t you wish you were as talented as your brother?” another couple asked.

  “Do you get jealous that your brother is so handsome?” yet another couple asked.

  And so on and so on, it seemed that Louise was standing
there, unfairly being compared by complete strangers to a kid brother she had introduced to acting. Eventually, Louise began to stay at Oak Avenue less and less as her life steered her away from Christian and David. When she got her own place, visiting relatives would stay at her home, not at Oak Avenue.

  David used to say, “There are two important questions that everyone must ask of themselves, and it must be in this order:

  Where am I going?

  Who is going with me?”

  For Christian, after yet another promising start, it seemed as if he was back to square one. However, he would learn soon enough that he’d have new allies.

  Christian and his dogs, Mojo and Codger, in Manhattan Beach, California.

  [6]

  Baleheads Begin

  “They’re my loyal, hardcore group of fans who I use to intimidate directors into giving me parts. I think it was a few years ago that someone started saying: ‘WE ARE BALEHEADS!’ I thought, yeah, I’m all for that—my own little private army.”

  —Christian Bale, Hotline Magazine

  Remember the 1990s? (I’m sure some of you younger fans don’t!) It’s very weird for me to write about the inception of the Internet like a historical event, but in the past twenty years, the way we entertain, inform, and communicate has changed so much thanks to a network that has its origins in military paranoia when they created a way to play a shell game with data in the event of a nuclear attack. Christian’s success on the Internet could only have happened in the early 1990s because movie buffs were just finding their voices online. People were craving information and looking for Web sites to visit. If television, radio, and film were the traditional media, dominated and controlled by studios, networks, and advertising agencies, the Internet was like the ultimate public broadcast channel—open and free to all.

  And Christian Bale would be its first star.

  1992. The Internet was in its infancy as far as commercial use was concerned. There was no Amazon, no eBay, no Craigslist, no Facebook, and no Twitter. If you had a computer at home, it probably had a 486 processor running Windows 3.1, or it was a Macintosh LC. And if you wanted Internet access from your home, it was dial-up and you had a choice of using one of the hundreds of America Online (AOL) start-up disks or CDs they mailed out to you, or you used CompuServe.

  That same year, Tim Burton’s second Batman movie, Batman Returns, starring Michael Keaton as Batman, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, and Danny DeVito as the Penguin was a box office smash, finishing off 1992 as the third-highest grossing film.

  But 1992 wasn’t looking like a good year for Christian. From an actor’s point of view, it’s dangerous to have box office bomb after bomb, because producers get scared of anyone who reeks of that fatal cologne, Box Office Poison. Once actors get a box office poison rep, they lose opportunities for leading roles. Worse still, the salary an actor can negotiate—his “quote”—depends on his box office track record. A hot A-list movie star commands top quote, gets gross points (profit-sharing from the movie’s gross revenue as opposed to net points), has his choice of roles, his command of cast, and potentially even his choice of directors. An up-and-coming actor? Refer to the proverb “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Just look up John Travolta pre-and post-Pulp Fiction to see how a career can drastically change once you transition from “up-and-coming” to “established.”

  There was plenty of blame to go around for Newsies’ and Swing Kids’ failures. Christian and his dad blamed first-time movie directors Kenny Ortega and Thomas Carter, Disney, for not marketing either picture, and Christian’s Triad agent. Taking his father’s advice, Christian changed agencies and signed with William Morris, hoping a new agent could help change his luck and improve his opportunities as he searched for his remaining Disney picture in his three-picture deal.

  However, Newsies did attract a couple of important fans. Winona Ryder loved Newsies and promptly ran out to rent everything Christian had appeared in. She was preparing to remake the American classic Little Women, based on the book by Louisa May Alcott, and was on the hunt to cast the role of Laurie, the rich young boy next door.

  Meanwhile, 2,200 miles from Los Angeles, in Toronto, my own connection to Christian was just beginning, though I hardly knew at the time how deeply involved I’d eventually become with him and his family.

  I went to see Newsies with my friend Laurie Reid at the Kingsway Theater. We were both movie buffs with broad tastes. I loved everything from big epics to sci-fi (especially Star Trek) to David Lynch. Laurie was also a Trekker and a huge fan of old Hollywood musicals, and she was very curious about Newsies as Disney was proudly touting it as the first major studio musical to be released in decades. You’d have to look back to Grease (1978) or Hair (1979) for a major studio live-action musical. By the time disco died, the live-action musical had its last dying breath with the bomb Xanadu (1980). As Laurie’s future husband, the Canadian crime novelist John McFetridge, would rather have had an appendectomy before watching a musical, Laurie and I wound up seeing Newsies on our own.

  To say that Laurie was smitten by Christian Bale’s performance would be an understatement. She loved his singing voice and she loved his dancing. She told me that Christian looked like a young Jimmy Stewart, who happened to be her favorite actor from Hollywood’s Golden Age. He was unlike any other young actor emerging at that time. And when we discovered that this New York-accented street kid was the same English schoolboy from Empire of the Sun, we were both very impressed.

  For movie buffs like Laurie and me, Christian Bale appeared to be a classy young actor who was much more talented than his heavily hyped (or self-promoting) American competition at the time—actors like Ethan Hawke, Christian Slater, Stephen Dorff, or Skeet Ulrich. With Christian’s singing and dancing talents, and his uncanny ability to reproduce accents, he was like a throwback to Hollywood’s golden era when actors had to have a range of skills and do more than just sulk, squint, and look “intense.”

  Christian was like our own personal discovery. In Canada, if you were an Anglophile, you would’ve seen all the Merchant Ivory films like Howard’s End, but here was young Christian, an English talent who wasn’t part of that Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter crowd. Christian truly seemed to be an undiscovered young talent.

  So we formed the Society to Appreciate Obscure British Actors and made it our mission to watch the films of the actors who were underappreciated and unnoticed by Hollywood. Our favorite actors at the time included Daniel Day-Lewis, Rupert Graves, Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor. While American movie buffs were worshipping at the altar of Tarantino, we were lining up at the Toronto Film Festival to watch the latest from Danny Boyle and Stephen Frears.

  It’s funny that, for me, if Christian had not done a movie about China and, for Laurie, a couple of musicals, we probably would not have noticed or been so invested in his young and struggling career. Empire of the Sun, Newsies, Swing Kids, Prince of Jutland—could a budding actor sustain much more failure without giving up completely?

  In retrospect, we were caught up in a moment that moved us from movie buff to fan. A movie buff can talk movies all day long—who’s their favorite actor, director, genre. A fan, as we saw it, was a movie buff who actively sought movies by a favorite actor or director. And since we were worried that Christian’s career was headed for disaster, we felt he needed fans.

  The good news? I was in marketing communications for the largest software company in Canada at the time. I had experience in developing online marketing campaigns, so it felt natural for me to spread the news of Bale in cyberspace. On the Internet, we crossed paths with other movie buffs who had noticed Christian’s performance in Newsies and Swing Kids. But what many people didn’t realize, in the days before the IMDb, was that he was the same actor from Empire of the Sun. AOL had a large message board area dedicated to Talk About Actors. So did CompuServe. Once we started talking about Christian and his other films, we were quickly converting those movie buffs into Bale
fans. We turned musical buffs into Newsies fans. We turned Spielberg buffs into Empire of the Sun fans. World War II movies your thing? Check out Swing Kids. It’s like Cabaret-lite! Check out Treasure Island at your video store! In those days, message boards had a maximum number of posts, so AOL and CompuServe would start new folders for our favorite actor. That’s how the seeds of the Christian Bale fan community—Baleheads—were sown. It was audience creation at the grassroots level.

  We decided to write Christian letters of appreciation, laud, and encouragement. (Okay, that’s just a fancy way of saying “fan letter.”) In the years before there were Web sites with agency addresses like fanmail.biz or IMDbPro, we hit the bookstores to find an address for Christian and sent off our letters to his old agent in London.

  Fatefully, I received a reply.

  It was spring of 1993 when I arrived home to find an envelope with a Los Angeles postmark waiting for me. I opened the envelope to find a handwritten letter from Christian Bale. I was surprised. It was common belief that actors didn’t personally respond to fan mail but here was a letter, handwritten no less, from Christian himself. Christian thanked me for my support and wrote that his most recent film, Prince of Jutland, had not yet found a distributor.