Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  But despite the hard work and the flexibility of the Batsuit, Christian revealed it still wasn’t the most comfortable costume to wear. The suit heated up regularly, which reportedly put Christian in a foul mood—a mood he later claimed helped give Batman his dark and brooding persona: “The truth is, it’s just a lot of fun to put on the Batsuit and jump into the Batmobile and just roar around. That was a huge thrill for me, one hell of a kick. I’ve never been that much into cars but you get in the Batmobile and you can’t help but love it. The engine’s screaming and it’s just like a bat out of hell! The Batsuit ain’t so great! But I think they’ve honed it and refined it and mine is probably the most comfortable made yet. That’s not to say it was comfortable. It is a big pain putting it on and I was in it for seven months. But Batman’s meant to be fierce and you become a beast in that suit, as Batman should be—not a man in a suit but a different creature.”

  The Batsuit and the movie were a huge hit with moviegoers, who flocked to cinemas to see Christian resurrect the role. The film opened on June 15, 2005, and grossed $48 million its opening weekend in the U.S. and ended up grossing over $370 million worldwide.

  More importantly to the devoted fans, Batman Begins had restored critical respectability to the franchise. It was a vindication that the Baleheads—which had now grown to encompass Batfans—had helped Warner Bros. choose wisely.

  Batman Begins was deemed a huge hit and Christian had suddenly become a worldwide superstar. The days of box office poison, Christian Fail seemed over. The question now was not whether there would be a sequel, but whether Christian would be able to handle his newfound fame?

  [13]

  Harsh Times

  “I don’t think I would ever act in a movie with Christian.”

  —Louise Bale, sister

  B atman Begins was both a box office and critical success and Christian had finally become an A-list star, an actor who could open a movie. But that fame came at a heavy price both personally and professionally. He was now a household name for the first time in his twenty-year career. Moviegoers, not just fans, recognized him on the street, something he’d never really encountered before.

  Because Christian hated interacting with fans almost as much as he despised dealing with the press, it was almost unbearable for the intensely private star to be recognized in public. Until Batman, he never really had to deal with fans on a personal level, preferring to keep his army of Baleheads at arm’s length on the Internet. But now he realized he would have to bite the bullet, try to put a smile on his face, and turn on the charm when confronted with the Batman fan boys who were rapidly swelling the ranks of the Balehead community.

  He told one reporter: “I’d love to remain a secret and still work but I also want people to see the movies I’m in and get a higher profile because of that. But I don’t want to know about the lives of other actors and I don’t want people to know too much about me. If we don’t know about the private lives of other actors that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters.”

  That, of course, is Christian’s standard rationalization for keeping the public away. It’s the evolution of his upbringing. David fostered Christian’s sense of entitlement and his belief that no one had the right to tell him what he “should” or “must” do.

  Christian admitted in an interview with GQ magazine that he preferred his pre-blockbuster days when he could be completely anonymous. Christian told GQ: “I used to think about it way more when I wasn’t being recognized. For ages I used to think people were staring at me and I’d think: ‘Oh no, I’ve been spotted by some deranged fan.’ But of course, they hadn’t really recognized me at all, I just had something unsightly coming out of my nose. But anonymity back then was a lovely thing.”

  Anonymity was now a thing of the past. Batman Begins, which cost $150 million to make, had taken in a respectable $48 million in the U.S. in its opening weekend of June 15, 2005, making it the number-one movie in the country. The film finally went on to earn a staggering $372 million worldwide—more than anyone had dared hope for.

  There had been worries while filming that not even director Christopher Nolan could resurrect the failing franchise. But then the reviews started rolling in and studio bosses breathed a sigh of relief as nearly every review threw praise at the film. There were the odd reviewers who called the film “passable” or a “nonstarter” but overall critics seemed to love it. Respected film critic Roger Ebert proclaimed: “This is at last the Batman movie that I’ve been waiting for. Bale is just right for this emerging version of Batman. It’s strange to see him muscular and toned, after his cadaverous appearance in The Machinist but he suggests an inward quality that suits the character. I said this is the Batman movie I’ve been waiting for, more correctly this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for because I didn’t realize that more emphasis on story and character and less emphasis on high tech action was just what was needed. The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There’s something to it.”

  Before opening weekend was even over, studio bosses had green-lit a sequel, eager to cash in on the surprising success of the movie. They also launched a whole range of merchandising to tie in to the film, including the Batman Begins action figures based on Christian’s newly toned physique.

  But it wasn’t only the movie studio that was cashing in thanks to the success of Batman. Around the time Christian was named as Batman in 2003, his own sister Louise was the executive producer of a bizarre “fan” film called The Death of Batman, which involved shocking scenes of rape and torture.

  Louise herself appeared as Bruce Wayne’s mother in the twenty-eight-minute short film. Close friends found the movie more than a little peculiar, especially Louise’s role, since for years she had been a pseudo mother to Christian as they grew up 6,000 miles away from their own mother, Jenny.

  The Death of Batman was written and directed by Donnie Flaherty, the former surfer dude who had befriended the Bales years earlier when they had first relocated to California. He had tracked Christian down in Bournemouth from America and visited him there. Still, the family welcomed him with open arms and when David told him they were planning to move to Los Angeles, Donnie kept in touch. When David was looking at places to live in L.A., it was Donnie who introduced them to Manhattan Beach as he lived in nearby Hermosa Beach. After the Bales moved to the U.S., Donnie and Christian became friends; Donnie even taught Christian how to surf.

  But all too soon David decided that Donnie was turning more from a fan into a stalker and began to keep him away from Christian. He would tell Christian that Donnie wasn’t a good influence and would detract from his career. Over time David managed to shunt Donnie aside but Donnie stayed in close contact with Louise, especially after Christian and David both married and moved away. When The Death of Batman was gestating, Louise happily jumped on board and appeared to have no qualms about taking on the role of Mrs. Wayne.

  The film starts with Batman, played by Christopher Stapleton, cleaning up the drug problem in Gotham City, but when he comes across a petty thief and druggie, it all goes horribly wrong. The thief first Tasers Batman in the groin, causing him to fall unconscious. When Batman wakes up, he is chained up in an abandoned warehouse but still threatens to kill the thief when he gets free. From there the movie turns from a little weird to just downright bizarre, with the thief injecting drugs into the Caped Crusader’s neck and then raping him. He then puts a gun to Batman’s head and pulls the trigger, although it turns out there are no bullets in the gun.

  The thief then lectures Batman, telling him: “I want you to know pain. I want you to suffer like I’ve suffered. I want you to realize that what you do is wrong. And I want you to want to die.”

  He then continues to beat him before giving him a dog bowl to drink water from and then after telling Batman how he had spent five years in prison after being wrongly arrested by Batman, the thief shoots himself in the head. Batman is then seen taking a syring
e of heroin from a table nearby. The film then cuts to Batman’s body floating facedown in a river, apparently dead from a massive drug overdose. But the movie ends ambiguously not revealing if the body really is Batman or if Batman has instead put the thief inside the Batsuit and disappeared because he is so distraught over the suicide.

  The movie was shot in Sherman Oaks, California, in 2003—the year Christian was named as the new Batman. The Death of Batman was posted online and can be viewed on YouTube.

  It’s a difficult movie to watch, but all the more intriguing when one wonders if the script was written with Louise or Donnie in mind.

  Christian has never made any comment about the movie or his sister’s involvement in it. But the rift between them, which had been growing wider and wider since the family stopped living together in Manhattan Beach, was almost at breaking point. Up to now, Louise had still been involved in many areas of Christian’s life, though she did stay out of the limelight as Christian became a bigger and bigger star, even though she started off as the actor in the family. She preferred theater acting to movie acting and had been left with a bitter taste in her mouth from years earlier when casting agents had gone mad for Christian at the age of nine, spotting him hanging around backstage during a West End production of Bugsy Malone that Louise had scored a part in.

  Louise revealed in a rare interview in 1997: “The movie business is very, very different to the theatre business. Theatre is my first passion and the path I want to take.”

  In the same interview she admitted that while she had in the past visited her brother on his movie sets, she didn’t any longer because she didn’t want to cause trouble and be a distraction for him.

  She added: “I have visited Christian on many of his film sets. It is always a weird but exciting experience. On set there are a lot of people all with important jobs to do and I often feel in the way as a spectator. I don’t hang around too much because, if you’re not working, it’s not all that interesting and I always disappear when it is Christian’s time in front of the camera. I think having me in the background, behind the camera would be a big distraction.”

  So over the years, Louise distanced herself from Christian’s career, even though she was on hand to look out for him off set. But as home life became unbearable, with David seemingly favoring his only son over everything else, Louise broke out on her own and moved out. Still living nearby, Louise played peacemaker in the family. Whenever mum Jenny wanted to visit Los Angeles and see Christian, she would always stay with Louise, not wanting to be under the same roof as David. Louise would then facilitate meetings between Christian and his mother in a bid to keep everyone happy. Soon Louise was living her own life and had found her own happiness when she met and married actor Shea Kline.

  But after Death of Batman, Christian began to keep her at arm’s length and instead turned to wife Sibi even more for advice and help where his career was concerned. By then, both David and I were out of the picture.

  So in an effort to put his personal problems behind him, Christian began earnestly looking for his next role. Even though there was a Batman sequel on the horizon, the script still had to be written and shooting was not scheduled to begin until April 2007, almost two years away.

  But with a bumper paycheck guaranteed for the next Batman movie—believed to be a salary of $13 million with back-end profits—Christian knew he could go back to taking risks with indie films.

  Tom Cruise had been the first actor to demand back-end profits for Mission Impossible II in 2000. This meant taking a lower salary but earning a percentage of the profits made from a movie once the budget and marketing money had been paid back. It can be a huge gamble taking a profit incentive payment instead of a $20 million salary. But for Cruise it paid off as he raked in close to $75 million in the end. After that, other actors began demanding the same deal and by the time Christian came to sign his deal for The Dark Knight, it was a standard industry practice.

  So he began looking around for scripts that would excite him, rather than movies that would simply be money makers. As Edward Jay Epstein says in his book, The Hollywood Economist, “Movie stars come in two flavors: $20 million and free.”

  And now he could have his pick. With the success of Batman, Hollywood finally opened its doors wide to Christian. Before he would have been up against a whole host of other young Hollywood stars vying for the same role but now he could practically pick and choose whatever he wanted to do.

  In the end, he made six films in the two years between the two Batman movies. Fresh off the set of Batman Begins, Christian undertook the role of John Rolfe in the Terence Malick movie The New World, a drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the seventeenth century.

  However, Christian was not the lead. The lead part went to Colin Farrell, who played Captain John Smith, while Hollywood veteran Christopher Plummer was cast as Captain Newport. Newcomer Q’orianka Kilcher was Native American beauty Pocahontas, who saves Captain Smith from execution.

  The movie was another flop for Christian. With a budget of $30 million, the film failed to make back even half of that figure during its theatrical release, taking in just $12.7 million worldwide.

  But once again he got glowing reviews for the role, with Rolling Stone magazine stating: “Farrell’s laddie-boy vigor sometimes feels at odds with the delicacy of the material. Christian Bale is far more persuasively in thrall as tobacco farmer John Rolfe, the widower who marries Pocahontas and sweeps her off to London when Smith deserts her.”

  By the time the movie was released in December 2005, Christian had already filmed his next two movies, Harsh Times and Rescue Dawn.

  Harsh Times was a tough drama about two friends living in South Central Los Angeles and the violence that comes between them. A small indie film with a budget of just $2 million, it was a movie Christian had wanted to do since 2001, and thanks to Batman the studio was happy to cast him.

  He revealed in an interview: “I wanted to do something that wasn’t a big juggernaut of a movie and this was one that I’d wanted to do for a few years. I’d met Dave [director David Ayers]—I can’t remember exactly when but it might have been as early as 2001 and we met at a bar and ended up being there something like five hours arguing about things. He’s an engaging guy, he doesn’t mince his words and I just loved the character, the momentum of the whole thing. At the time it was a studio piece and nobody wanted me to do it but with Batman, I thought, maybe now they’ll cast me.”

  The movie was a modest success, earning $3.5 million—only $1.5 million more than its budget but still a profit, which is always good news for the studio.

  Just three months after filming Harsh Times on the streets of L.A., Christian was in the jungles of Thailand for his next movie, Rescue Dawn. This time Christian was the lead as Lieutenant Dieter Dengler in a fictionalized account of his bravery and comradeship in the early days of the Vietnam War. Lt. Dengler’s plane was shot down over Laos and he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese.

  The film was being directed by Werner Herzog, a director with a reputation for recklessly endangering actors during filming; however, the German director spoke out in 2007 to claim: “Contrary to the rumors that are going around, I’m very professional, very safety orientated.”

  Rescue Dawn’s producer, Harry Knapp, told Salon.com that Christian had scolded Herzog about a safety issue with a helicopter, telling him: “I’m not going to fucking die here!”

  Christian also rebuked Herzog when he broke with director’s tradition, yelling “stop” instead of “cut” to end a take. Recalled Knapp: “Out of nowhere, Herzog starts calling ‘stop’ to end a take instead of ‘cut’ and it set Christian off. He said: ‘Look we don’t know what stop is and we won’t stop if you say stop . . . say cut.’ Very next take Werner yells: ‘STOP.’ Christian now vomiting says: ‘If you say stop one more time I’m done for the day.’”

  Despite the friction, Christian really was del
ighted to be working with Herzog and admitted he took the role because: “I like going to hell and back!” He added: “I knew that Werner would be a good guy to take us there. How many times in life do you get to do this crazy shit? It’s something that I was going to take advantage of. That was the big appeal to me for doing it. I like that, just testing yourself and seeing how far you can go. Even though the finished movie is not real life, when you are actually swimming in the snake infested rivers, you’re not acting swimming in snake infested rivers. You are swimming in snake infested rivers! When you are wrestling with a snake, it’s not a pretend snake. You are wrestling with a wild snake. The snake was not venomous but he had some pretty good fangs on him and I got them in the shoulder. So to me that’s real life. That is what has become my real life. I really did do that.”

  Christian also ate maggots for the role and lost weight as the character Lt. Dengler was kept and tortured in a POW concentration camp. Recalled Christian in an interview with Movies Online, “Oh, yeah, those were real maggots. They were very real. I didn’t mind eating the maggots, but I just wanted to make sure about where the maggots had come from. Where did they find those maggots?” This time, however, he didn’t go to the extremes he did for The Machinist. He said: “I really actually didn’t lose a whole lot of weight for this one. I was thin but there’s a lot of good makeup and I just wanted enough to give kind of an indication of time and everything for it but it really wasn’t anything on the scale of The Machinist. I wouldn’t do that again. I’ve kind of conquered that in my mind and don’t need to prove that to myself again.”

  Rescue Dawn ended up grossing $5.5 million in the U.S., well short of its estimated $10 million budget, but reviews were generally favorable.