Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  “I only wear white,” he snapped. But I cut him off and told him that the different colors would accent his eyes and complexion. Before he could complain further, he had a sky-blue shirt on and he was busy admiring himself in the mirror.

  I also began to notice the cycles when Christian’s hair got pretty greasy. Maybe it was the dark imprints on his pillowcases that gave it away. Maybe it was the bits of lint that stuck to his hair or that I could see (honestly) strands of Mojo’s fur stuck to his head. Or maybe it was how his hair was turning black thanks to the accumulation of weeks of oil. I would wait each morning to see if he was going to wash his hair that day. How he could bathe or shower without washing his hair was beyond me. But Christian didn’t seem to mind—even when I made an acerbic comment or two about his pillowcases, which started to smell like the inside of a smokehouse.

  I decided to ask David to intercede.

  David, never the master of subtlety, immediately exploded in full excuse-mode for his son.

  “Harrison, in England, because of poor plumbing, because of Margaret Bloody Thatcher, water is a precious resource! She and the House of Bloody Lords have ruined the English economy! It’s perfectly normal to take a bath just once a week there.”

  “But we’re not in England, David.”

  “Bloody Americans!” he roared, changing his attack without skipping a beat. “They waste more water than any other country on Earth! Water, Harrison! Water! The gift of life itself! They waste more petrol than any other country on Earth! Did you know that the world’s supply of oil—”

  “Yes, David, I know!” I had to cut him off, as I didn’t have time for his ecological lectures or political tirades. “I just think that as a celebrity, you know, someone in the public eye, he really needs to wash his hair more often.”

  David calmed instantly. “Quite right! I understand, Harrison. As always, you are right and you are thinking about Christian’s well-being. That’s something we appreciate in you. It’s your Chinese heritage! Noble and pure of spirit. And your people do love to bathe and wash together, do you not?”

  I rolled my eyes, well used to David’s comments about the Chinese people. “You’re thinking about the Japanese. They take communal baths.”

  “Bloody Japanese!” he began.

  “Yes, David. So do you want to say something to Christian about his hair?”

  “You are remarkable! Quite remarkable! Always looking out for my son! I’ll talk to Christian. Rest assured that I will be discreet and subtle and tactful.”

  The next day, Christian stormed up to me in the kitchen.

  “Dad tells me you think my hair is dirty?”

  Fantastic. “No, I was just suggesting that perhaps you should wash your hair more often.” Damn, I realized that I used the word “should.”

  “Really, Harrison. Hair isn’t that important. A true actor has scant interest in such superficial matters. Look at Ethan Hawke.” At that, he turned around and marched out of the room.

  Acting as Christian’s publicist was always a challenge. Aside from pitching story ideas to magazines, arranging the phone interview or in-person interview, I had to deal with the dreaded photo session. Christian hated being photographed. I think he just didn’t respect the profession and he couldn’t stand being told what to do. Since he had to deal with film directors, I couldn’t understand his dislike of still photography, art directors, and everything that went into it.

  For instance, editorial photo sessions typically require a meeting with the stylist and makeup artist. I had to supply Christian’s measurements in advance since he refused to go in for a fitting. Of course, as he bulked up and down for different film roles, his measurements would change wildly, but in between film roles, Christian measured the following in 2002: Baleheads ready?

  Waist 33”

  Inseam 31.5”

  Neck 16”

  Sleeve 36”

  Shoe 11

  Height 6’1”

  Suit 41R

  Weight 185lbs

  After Metroland, Christian landed another small but pivotal role in the 1998 glam rock musical Velvet Goldmine. Directed by Todd Haynes (who would be nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2002’s Far From Heaven), Velvet Goldmine was a brash cinematic Valentine to the heady 1970s glam rock scene. Loosely based on the lives of David Bowie and Iggy Pop (the title actually comes from a David Bowie song), Christian played a reporter doing a “whatever happened to” piece on a former rock star. Coproduced by R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, the cast included Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Toni Collette, and Eddie Izzard.

  Producer Christine Vachon described encountering Christian and his dry humor on the set. “I approached Christian Bale to ask if I could get a ride in his car to my apartment. He had only been on set for a couple of days, so I didn’t really know him, but he seemed nice enough. He didn’t take kindly to my request, though. ‘My contract,’ he said curtly, ‘says I get an exclusive ride to and from the set.’ When I started to turn away, he said, ‘Christine, I’m kidding.’”

  Aside from heavy makeup and some extended frontal nudity from the always brave Ewan McGregor, Velvet Goldmine ended with a gay love scene between McGregor and Christian that was literally dusted with sparkles.

  To promote Velvet Goldmine, Christian participated in an online chat. He talked about the Ewan McGregor scene: “We forewent all the foreplay and to coin a phrase, went straight to taking it up the Gary Glitter. But it was quite tastefully done. We were first on a train and we thought it would be quite graphic and physical, and Todd chose to shoot it from across the way. Which was easier, except Todd chose to not tell us when he cut.”

  McGregor described the rooftop scene in much more graphic detail when he spoke to Totalfilm in 2005. “I was fucking Christian Bale, Batman, up the arse on a rooftop in King’s Cross and the crew was filming from another rooftop on the adjacent building. I hadn’t done gay penetrative sex, this was my first shot at it, so I’m standing behind Christian’s big naked back, going: ‘Wow, this is so . . . Peculiar.’ So I start, you know, pumping away slowly and I start to go more like a bunny rabbit, then like a Jack Russell. And I put my head to the side of his head, away from the camera, and I say: ‘I’m sure I’d have come by now. I’m going to have a look,’ and I glanced back and I saw the crew packing up and walking away! I think Todd [Haynes] had been so respectful of us that he hadn’t wanted to interrupt us by saying: ‘Cut’ . . . Or we didn’t hear ‘Cut.’ It was very funny.”

  At the time, both Christian and McGregor were pursuing the role of Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Phantom Menace, so there was a friendly rivalry that Christian often experienced with peers in his age bracket.

  What Christian didn’t realize was that McGregor had already been told that he had won the part midway through the Velvet Goldmine shoot, but was sworn to secrecy until the official announcement would take place months later.

  McGregor remembered, “I couldn’t do anything because I was on set and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”

  However, while on set, McGregor shared with Christian a tale of his own bad experience with the Hollywood studio system when he had lost the starring role in The Beach to Leonardo DiCaprio. Directed by longtime McGregor collaborator, Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, A Life Less Ordinary), McGregor was surprised when he was dumped for DiCaprio.

  McGregor told The Times in 2009: “Danny [Boyle] and I don’t speak, we haven’t spoken for years. There was a falling out of sorts over The Beach and that was quite a messy and hurtful time.”

  DiCaprio. The name burned Christian like a branding iron. Leonardo DiCaprio was shaping up to be Christian’s primary rival in Hollywood. Over the years, Christian had lost This Boy’s Life and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape to DiCaprio. Christian had read for the part of Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet but was told that they had decided to cast an African-American in the part instead. Christian, too, had gone up for the part of Jack Dawson in Titanic but was told that Jam
es Cameron didn’t want two British lead actors playing the two leads, who were both supposed to be American. Since British actress Kate Winslet was the starring love interest, the role of Jack had to go to an American actor. Now with McGregor’s experience with The Beach, it was yet another tale that Christian would keenly remember a few years later when he would go to war with DiCaprio for the lead in American Psycho.

  Eventually, when I informed Christian that McGregor had won the role of Obi Wan Kenobi, he quietly conceded, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  Velvet Goldmine won some praise by some critics. Janet Maslin of the New York Times described the film as “dazzlingly surreal.” But Empire Magazine’s Neil Jeffries wrote, “On paper, fine; on celluloid, a Rocky Horror Show of nightmarish proportions.” It was nevertheless a small independent film that few people saw in the theaters, grossing little more than $1 million.

  The week before shooting wrapped up on Velvet Goldmine, Christian was offered a starring role in his final indie film in his five-movie run: All The Little Animals, the directorial debut of Jeremy Thomas, who was, ironically, the Oscar-winning producer of The Last Emperor, the Bertolucci film that had decimated Empire of the Sun critically and commercially back in 1987.

  All the Little Animals was a nice change of pace for Christian as it was mostly shot in the remote countryside on the Isle of Man.

  “It’s a place where they can still birch people legally!” said Christian.

  Christian was paid a meager £80,000 for starring in All the Little Animals with John Hurt. Yes, a handsome salary for an independent actor, but not even close to enough to keep the House of Bale running back in Los Angeles.

  If you watch All the Little Animals, you might notice that Bobby, the simple character Christian plays, is remarkably similar to the simpleton character Stevie that Christian played in The Secret Agent. I pointed out the similarity to him, noting the only difference was that Stevie couldn’t make direct eye contact.

  Christian was impressed by my observation. “No one saw The Secret Agent, so I could reuse my characterization.”

  While all five of these independent films opened in limited theatrical release, each of Christian’s films did well at film festivals and on video, thanks to Christian’s strong worldwide fan following. For the U.S. premiere of Metroland at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Paola Freccero, artistic director, wrote, “Metroland by far received the most ticket inquiries of any of our films once our line-up was announced. We had a waiting list of ticket-buyers calling in from Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Colorado, Nevada, and Vancouver—obviously Christian has some very loyal fans willing to travel great distances to see his work!”

  The entertainment press continued to cover Christian’s rise as a cult star on the Internet:

  “It was the biggest groundswell of support we’ve ever gotten for any actor.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “We were all stunned.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  People on the Net just love Christian Bale!”

  —Time Out New York

  “He is consistently one of the most popular topics on America Online.”

  —SPIN Magazine

  “He has achieved megastardom on the Internet.”

  —Interview

  “With secret success stories like Bale’s, Hollywood might want to start checking its E-mail.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  I had successfully engineered a writing campaign to lobby Disney for a special fifth anniversary DVD treatment for Newsies that was loaded with extras, as well as a direct-to-video release for Prince of Jutland, which was renamed and reedited as Royal Deceit. The films also provided a lot of footage for Christian’s video résumé, which was constantly being updated for his agent to find him his next role. Whether Christian liked it or not, the majority of his fans had discovered him on video and because of Newsies. Those fans needed to be marketed to so that they could support his new works.

  Oddly enough, I was using a small video editing company in West Los Angeles to update Christian’s video résumé. The company was My You Me Productions and it was run by a very pleasant couple, Richard Heene and his wife, Mayumi. Mayumi was a skilled video editor who happily spent time with me and Christian every time we needed to add or remove a clip from his video résumé. (Richard and Mayumi Heene would later become famous for the “balloon boy” incident in 2009, when they claimed that one of their sons had floated away in an experimental balloon over the skies of Colorado.)

  While Christian was hopping back and forth across the Atlantic for these indie films, David was scrambling to put together bigger business deals. In 1996, I introduced Christian and David to Santa Monica Studios. Headed by David Rose, Santa Monica Studios and its special effects division, VisionArt, had won multiple Emmys for its work on the Star Trek television series and shared an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for its work on Independence Day.

  As luck would have it, Santa Monica Studios’ chief technology officer, Ted Fay, was a fan of Christian’s and followed Christian’s Internet presence. He had helped me with an early edit of Christian’s résumé and was very interested in having him star in a screenplay he was writing. Santa Monica Studios was planning to move into feature films, while David was looking for a company to apply for a green card for Christian.

  In Tinseltown, where deals are often done with a handshake, Christian and David tried to negotiate a formal contract that would include a green card and a retainer, while Santa Monica Studios preferred a letter of understanding. By 1997, a contract was signed and Fay recalled that it ended with the phrase, “it is in fact a partnership of faith.”

  Fay had written a script about pilot Russell O’Quinn, who had famously been asked by the U.S. State Department to head the 1969 food airlift to Biafra during the civil war in Nigeria. Since David often claimed that he had been a commercial pilot for British Airways or British Midland, Fay decided to introduce him to O’Quinn. After meeting with David, O’Quinn remarked: “I doubt he was a pilot of any sort. He definitely was never a commercial pilot!”

  On May 13, 1997, the Hollywood Reporter announced that Alyssa Milano and Christian Bale would star in Jungle Croquet, a romantic adventure film about a small-town librarian who travels to England and finds herself caught up in a romantic scandal with Britain’s most eligible blueblood bachelor. It was the first project that marked “a new production partnership between Santa Monica Studios and Bale’s production company.”

  Christian was furious. He exploded at his father. He had not even seen the script for Jungle Croquet, much less agreed to be in it. Christian’s agent was also shocked to hear about any deal made without her involvement. David, who was hoping to get some momentum from their production deal with Santa Monica Studios, hastily canceled the project. The partnership of faith was over before it really began.

  However, all was not lost. David definitely profited from reading Fay’s screenplay about Russell O’Quinn as he began to embellish his own tales of piloting by adding that it was he who had flown food aid airlifts to Nigeria. Fay observed: “David was apparently so impressed with Russell’s story, that in a sense he made it his own.” Years later, in David’s New York Times obituary, Paul von Zielbauer would write that David “became a pilot in the hope of establishing air rescue and food supply flights in Africa.”

  Christian’s final small film of the 1990s would be the small part of Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shot in 1998 and scheduled to be released on April 26, 1999 (approximately William Shakespeare’s birthday), the lavish but very traditional Shakespeare adaptation was a labor of love for director Michael Hoffman (The Last Station) and its star, Michelle Pfeiffer, who had always wanted to bring a version to the big screen. Distributed and financed by Fox Searchlight, the film was shot on location in Tuscany, Italy, one of Christian’s favorite places, with an all-star cast that included Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett, Stanley Tucci, Calista Flockhart, and Anna
Friel.

  Reviews were mixed and box office reception was cool, largely thanks to the high expectations set for Shakespeare adaptations by Baz Luhrmann’s innovative reimagining of Romeo & Juliet in 1996 (which starred Christian’s nemesis DiCaprio and his Little Women costar Claire Danes) and the witty romantic 1998 comedy and Oscar-hog, Shakespeare in Love.

  Though Christian loved shooting in breathtaking Montepulciano, a medieval Tuscan town, he didn’t find A Midsummer Night’s Dream particularly fulfilling. His character’s love interest was Hermia, played by Calista Flockhart, who was ten years his senior. Chemistry was nonexistent, Christian told me. Christian told a reporter: “To be honest, I didn’t really feel attachment to the character at all and I did find, with the language and everything, that really removed me from it.”

  He began going out with Anna Friel during the shoot. Friel, better known in the U.K. thanks to her pioneering role as a lesbian in the British soap opera Brookside, would later costar with Will Ferrell in the box office bomb Land of the Lost. It was a relationship that David did not approve of, as he assumed that an English actress like Friel was merely trying to get access to Christian’s American agent. More likely, though, David was worried about any relationship that could potentially become serious and cause Christian to think about returning to England.

  Christian was getting frustrated with his William Morris agent, wondering why his generally well-reviewed performances in these small European indie films weren’t translating into a big U.S. part. She continued to blame his low-profile publicity. Again she said Christian’s coverage as the biggest star on the Internet wasn’t taken seriously by the studios. However, it was rumored that Christian was also dating Winona Ryder whenever the two were in Los Angeles together and his agent was hoping that Christian would go public with the relationship to get him more publicity.

  “We’re just friends!” he scolded. He happened to be very good friends with Winona. They had clandestine meetings at hotels up the coast or in Las Vegas. She had asked him to come to the final deathbed party for Timothy Leary, her godfather. They were very good friends indeed. Christian, however, bristled at the idea of using his relationship with Ryder for publicity.