Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  The game company Halycon had purchased the Terminator franchise in 2007 from producers, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, for a reported $25 million. The franchise had been very good to its original star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and director, James Cameron. And Schwarzenegger’s star power could still propel his third Terminator movie (without Cameron at the helm) to outgross Christian’s Terminator Salvation.

  Christian revealed: “I went: ‘No, I don’t even have to read this.’ I just thought, the mythology was dead. I mean, I did flick through it because you can always be surprised. But I wasn’t surprised by what I read in that one. I had people telling me: ‘Don’t do it Christian, don’t go with that guy.’”

  Christian initially turned down the role, wanting instead to concentrate on the Batman franchise. But when director McG, who is afraid of flying, got on a plane to London to beg Christian to be his John Connor, the star finally changed his mind. McG believed that Christian was the only actor who had both the “intensity and the integrity” to re-kickstart the sci-fi franchise.

  Christian eventually agreed to star in the film, but with two conditions: He got to pick his costar and the script had to be rewritten. He immediately handed over the script to Jonathan Nolan, the screenwriting brother of Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan. Nolan went to work on the script, overhauling the story line, fleshing it out, and beefing up Christian’s role as Connor. After Nolan worked his magic on the screenplay, it was then handed over to additional writers, including Oscar winner Paul Haggis, who has written such award-winning movies as Crash and Million Dollar Baby as well as the scripts for Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace for the newly revamped Bond franchise.

  So, by the time the movie opened on May 14, 2009, there were high expectations. Yet Terminator Salvation, which cost over $200 million to make, took in just $125 million in the U.S. The movie eventually grossed $372 million worldwide, but with the budget and the millions of dollars spent on marketing it only just turned a profit.

  And to top it off, the star getting all the attention from the press this time was newcomer Sam Worthington to whom, ironically, Christian had given his seal of approval for the role. Worthington then went on to star in another James Cameron blockbuster, Avatar, the 3-D spectacular that became the world’s biggest grossing movie ever. Then he starred in the hit 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, yet another box office smash. In Terminator, the hunky younger star wasn’t even top billing. Christian was the lead as savior John Connor. Yet it was the unknown Australian actor in his first big American blockbuster who blew the critics away.

  Hollywood Variety wrote: “Heath Ledger stole The Dark Knight away from Bale and Sam Worthington heists Terminator Salvation from Bale for the most ironical of reasons: In a movie that poses man against machine, Worthington’s Cyborg is the far more human character.”

  In the San Francisco Chronicle review, Mick LaSalle noted: “When Christian Bale allowed himself to play Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, he was slumming—and to good effect. But with Terminator Salvation, this ostensibly serious actor takes up residence in the action ghetto and it’s not a good fit.”

  And respected movie reviewer Roger Ebert said: “Edward Furlong was infinitely more human as John Connor than Christian Bale in this film.”

  It was as if bad karma haunted the role of John Connor. Edward Furlong, the original John Connor in Terminator 2: Rise of the Machines, was replaced by Nick Stahl for the sequel. Another former child actor, Furlong’s post-Terminator career was ailing after a couple of arrests and incidents. The TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled just months before the opening of Terminator Salvation. Thomas Dekker, who portrayed a teen John Connor in the series, was charged a few months later for felony DUI. And perhaps creepiest of all, in February 2010, news broke that the New Mexico house where Christian was staying during the shoot of Terminator Salvation had a dead body buried in the yard—a murder victim who had disappeared eight years prior.

  Christian definitely breathed more life into his next role as FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis in Public Enemies. Starring alongside one of this generation’s greatest actors, Johnny Depp, and playing bank robber and Depression-era folk hero John Dillinger would have been nerve-racking for any actor. But Christian stood his own, garnering great reviews for his portrayal of Purvis, who made it his mission to track down and arrest Dillinger in the 1930s.

  But it seems as though his Terminator Salvation rant may have cost him an Oscar nomination for Public Enemies. On the show Inside Edition, Los Angeles Times columnist Tom O’Neill said this about Christian: “How a star acts off camera is as important as how they act onscreen.”

  The movie fared modestly at the box office when it opened to strong reviews in June 2009. Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann, cost an estimated $100 million to make and took in $214.8 million worldwide. But Christian admitted that working on Batman, Terminator Salvation, and Public Enemies back to back left him burnt out.

  He vowed to take a break from filming after revealing in early 2009: “Terminator’s coming out, then Public Enemies is coming out after that, and then I’ll just wait and see for the first time ever. I kind of felt burnt out and just knowing that if I took on any movie right now, I wouldn’t be able to commit myself properly. But variety is essential for me. I love watching a Michael Mann movie. I love watching a Christopher Nolan movie. Just to talk about my stuff, I enjoy a Machinist kind of movie, a Rescue Dawn, a 3:10 to Yuma, an American Psycho, whatever. But I also love watching Terminator movies, I love watching Batman movies . . . For me it’s less important that following the Terminator that I quickly get Public Enemies out there. I’m just not as strategic as that but for my own personal satisfaction I need to vary it up. I couldn’t for instance follow up Terminator by doing another Terminator straight away.”

  Yet despite his proclamation that he was “burnt out” and wanted to spend time away from movies, Christian jumped straight into his next project. After spending just a month hanging out with Sibi and their then three-year-old daughter, Emmaline, in Los Angeles after the premiere of Public Enemies, Christian was back on a movie set. (As another example of Christian’s uneasy relation with fame and publicity, even his daughter’s birthdate and birthplace were not immediately revealed. Emmaline is a public name while Christian has compartmentalized facts among his inner circle. To some members of his family, his daughter is known as Luka Isabella.)

  This time he was starring alongside Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter. And once again Christian did what he does best—he completely transformed himself for the role. Just like he did for The Machinist, the star began losing weight for his role as Dicky Eklund, the famous boxer turned crack addict.

  The Fighter opened in limited release in the U.S. on December 10, 2010, just making it eligible for the Academy Award nominations. The movie made just $300,000 in its opening weekend, but it was a huge critical success.

  Movie reviewers began falling over themselves to praise the film, in particular Christian and his costar Melissa Leo who played Alice Ward, the mother of Dicky and Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg.

  Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote: “The weakness of the film is the weakness of the leading role. That’s not a criticism of Mark Wahlberg who has quite a capable range but of how he and Russell see the character. That’s not the case with Dicky, Alice and Charlene and those characters are where the life is. Christian Bale, who has played Batman and John Connor in the Terminator and for Werner Herzog played a man who survived the jungles of Laos, so successfully transforms himself that you see a career as a cutup in the Jackass movies.”

  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: “After Matt Damon and Brad Pitt turned down the role of crackhead Dickie, Wahlberg lucked out big time with Christian Bale. I have one word for Bale: phenomenal. He dropped 30 pounds to play the skinny, loose-limbed, demon-driven Dickie. But his hilarious and heartbreaking performance cuts deep under the surface. Bale’s eyes reflect the man Mickey grew up he
ro-worshipping and the ‘pride of Lowell’ who might find that pride again as Micky’s trainer.”

  Claudia Puig of USA Today raved: “Bale is astounding as a strangely charismatic weasel, giving probably the best performance of his career. Suave Bruce Wayne of 2005’s Batman is long gone, Bale’s handsome face is almost unrecognisably gaunt. Bale’s knockout performance should not be missed. Dicky steals the show, much like he does his family’s attention.”

  And Anne Hornaday from the Washington Post added: “The title character of the Fighter might be Micky—played here in a straight-up, stalwart, hugely sympathetic performance by Mark Wahlberg. But it could just as easily pertain to the hardscrabble Dicky, especially as he’s channelled by Christian Bale. Down 30 pounds, Bale is nothing less than revelatory as the skinny, skeeved-out crackhead, who, against all odds, commands the audience’s attention and, improbably, a few laughs.”

  The buzz around the little boxing movie began to grow and before the end of 2010, Christian was being mentioned as the front-runner of the awards season. The movie went on to make $93.5 million at the U.S. box office alone—not bad for a film with an estimated budget of just $25 million.

  The rave reviews for The Fighter were perfect for the all-important Christmas moviegoers, generating buzz ahead of the award nominations season that would culminate with the Oscars. Christian reluctantly did his publicity duties to promote the film. It was the first time he was in front of the press since his Terminator Salvation rant had gone viral. To head off any potentially embarrassing or provocative interrogation, Christian’s ground rules about the format of the interview were clear: Q&A format only. No personal questions. Christian’s cover interview with Esquire would bring his bad boy image back to the forefront with what Esquire described as a “testy encounter.” Esquire writer John H. Richardson scolded Christian, “There’s nothing that’s more of a dick movie-star move than to say, ‘It has to be printed as a Q&A.’ That’s movie star. You and Tom Cruise back in the day are the only people who do that shit.”

  “I want to be able to just act and never do any interview, but I don’t have the balls to stand up to the studio and say, ‘I’m never doing another interview in my life!’ So I tip my hat and go, ‘Okay mister! All right mister! I’ll go do the salesman job!’”

  —Christian Bale, Esquire, December 2010

  Ironically, after Christian had lost more than 60 lbs. for his role in The Machinist, he received mixed reviews and precious few award nominations. For The Fighter, Christian was careful not to bandy about the exact weight loss figure; instead he just stated that he had to look like a welterweight (140–147 lbs.). Of course, The Machinist came out before Christian was the star of Batman and was widely considered difficult to watch. The Fighter would have that Rocky crowd-pleasing vibe, and Christian’s fans would see the hunky man who had been Bruce Wayne transformed into a sweet crackhead.

  January 2011 would be an exciting month for Christian as he began to rack up acting award nominations and wins for his performance in The Fighter. Up against the hugely popular The Kings Speech and its Best Supporting Actor front-runner, Geoffrey Rush, Christian scored nominations from BAFTA and the National Society of Film Critics to name a couple. However, Vegas odds-makers were taking notice when Christian won Best Supporting Actor awards from the Screen Actors Guild, the National Board of Review, and most importantly, a Golden Globe Award.

  For his Golden Globe acceptance speech, Christian astonished viewers with a frank admission about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—the people who had voted for him to win the Golden Globe. He said: “Thanks to the HFPA. I never really knew who those guys were. I’d always leave the press junkets going who were those oddball characters in that room?”

  The Golden Globe Award win tilted Hollywood pundits to favor Christian for an Oscar nomination. And on February 27, 2011, Christian would see his hard work for The Fighter honored with a gold statuette. Christian beat out front-runner Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Jeremy Renner (The Town), and Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right).

  When Christian walked up to the podium to accept his award, he took a self-humored jab at his potty mouth reputation, saying, “I’m not going to drop the f-bomb like she did, I’ve done that plenty before.” He was referring to his Fighter costar Melissa Leo, who had earlier taken home the Best Support Actress Oscar and said “fuck” on live TV. Thanking the cast and crew of The Fighter, Christian astonished the audience by seemingly forgetting his wife’s name. With hesitation and fumbling, obviously charged with emotion, he concluded: “And of course [pause] mostly, my wonderful wife, [pause] I didn’t think I was like this. My wonderful wife who’s my mast through the storms of life, I hope I’m likewise to you darling and our little girl who’s taught me so much more than I’ll ever be able to teach her. Thank you, thank you so much.”

  Five thousand miles away, Jenny Bale proudly sent her son an e-mail of congratulations. No response. She had not heard from her son in the three years since the incident at The Dorchester Hotel.

  [16]

  Award Season

  “The way Christian Bale’s arm is around his wife reads like she probably can’t take a shit w/out his okay.”

  —Sarah Silverman, via Twitter

  “Christian Bale looks ready to slay Grendel.”

  —Seth McFarlane, via Twitter

  Christian stunned everyone during the 2011 awards season by looking like a scruffy, homeless person. He joked about his bushy beard, laughing it off as being “too lazy” between movies.

  When actors are in between projects during their “downtime,” you’ll see their candid shots in entertainment magazines—unshaven and unkempt on the beach or at the supermarket. But rarely do you see actors looking disheveled during a publicity tour. They’re selling a movie and, of course, they’re selling themselves. In 2010, Joaquin Phoenix declared that he had quit acting and showed up notoriously on David Letterman with a shaggy beard, looking like, in Letterman’s words, the Unabomber. Though Christian was doing publicity duties to promote The Fighter, it seemed that his Joaquin Phoenix-like appearance during the press junket and especially during award shows was his way of telling the press that no matter how many big movies he starred in, he was never going to be a typical movie star.

  After the end of his publicity tour, he did manage to get cleaned up and to head off to China to start his next film. On paper, The Flowers of War looked like a master stroke for Christian’s career. With more and more movies relying on foreign markets for profits, a film by China’s best known filmmaker, Yimou Zang, seemed like a smart move for Christian to build his Chinese box office presence outside of Batman. And making a Chinese movie also got Christian around China’s foreign film quota.

  Christian was never a great scholar of history, but he was always curious—he loved to ask why things were a certain way, just like a kid. When the U.K. had to return Hong Kong to China in 1997, he asked me to explain why. I told him about the infamous ninety-nine-year lease and what I knew of the Opium Wars, but Christian was thinking about England’s 1982 victory over Argentina contesting the Falkland Islands and wondering aloud why the British Navy couldn’t simply win a war with China to secure Hong Kong permanently.

  “A war with China,” I told him with just a touch of ethnic pride, “wouldn’t be the same as the Falkland War.” Christian smiled back at me, equally confident of the Royal Navy’s abilities.

  While Christian was researching for his role in American Psycho, he was eager to read about atrocities to understand more about the human capacity for cruelty. I presented him Iris Chang’s landmark book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, the first English-language account of the Nanjing Massacre when hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were murdered and tens of thousands of Chinese women were raped by Japanese soldiers after the city was captured on December 13, 1937. He and I sat up late one evening poring over the horrific photos
in the book of the dead and mutilated. It was important for me to have my friend learn a little history.

  The Flowers of War was based on Geling Yan’s novel, The 13 Flowers of Nanjing, which is set during the Nanking Massacre. The novel is the story of thirteen prostitutes taking refuge in a church who offer to trade places with thirteen school girls to save them from being raped by Japanese soldiers. Yan is a very successful Chinese-American writer who may be the only person to be a member of both the Writers Guild of America and the Writers’ Association of China. A number of her works have been adapted into movies in China.

  On the Chinese side, moviegoers were impressed that a major Hollywood star like Christian Bale would be in a Chinese film—his first major shoot in China since Empire of the Sun. But outside of China, Yimou Zang’s reputation had been tarnished in recent years. Zang’s career began as one of China’s most daring new directors, known for powerful dramas and stunning primary-color palettes. Films like Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990), and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) earned Zang an international reputation as one of China’s best directors and launched the career of actress Gong Li.

  But his 1994 film To Live, which depicted life and hardship during China’s Cultural Revolution, not only earned him the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival but also a two-year ban from filmmaking by Communist China. Its star, Gong Li, also suffered a two-year ban because, it was said, the Chinese government felt that the film took a negative stance toward certain aspects of Chinese history.

  The ban seemed to have affected Zang’s career as he shifted gears from dramas to big historic epics like Hero with none-too-subtle messages that some critics complained toed the Communist Party line. By 2008, Zang impressed China and the world with the spectacularly elaborate opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, but as the New York Times’ Edward Wong noted, it looked as if Zang had become “China’s Leni Reifenstahl.”