Christian Bale

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

In our interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal, she raved about how much fun it was to film scenes with Aaron Eckhart: "We would spend lots of time hanging out, talking, playing, joking," she said. Great -- but what about Christian Bale'

"It was very, very different," she said, smiling. "I find Christian to be very still and intense."

Still and intense: two terrific traits to have when you're portraying Batman, which Bale did, to terrific reviews, in 2005's Batman Begins and again in this summer's The Dark Knight, both directed by Christopher Nolan. But while those traits help during filming, they won't necessarily make the interview any easier.

Luckily, Bale turns out to be plenty talkative -- just in the quiet, serious manner that has obviously worked well for him over his twenty-year career.

After a string of films as a kid -- he debuted in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun and also sung and danced his way through Newsies -- he matured swiftly into adult roles. While paying the bills in movies like Shaft and Reign of Fire, Bale quickly built up a resume of offbeat, crticially-acclaimed performances in films like Velvet Goldmine, Metroland, and American Psycho.

That last one, a vicious satire of vain businessmen in which Bale played the Huey Lewis-loving murderous sociopath Patrick Bateman, proved to be his breakout role. He's since starred in celebrated movies like The New World, Equilibrium, The Prestige (working again with Nolan), 3:10 to Yuma, and of course, the Batman franchise.

Having gone through it, Bale is quick to condemn acting in the Hollywood system as a kid. "Introducing kids to a professional industry, they may not recognize the pressure, but very quickly they [find themselves in] what is an adult industry," he says. "I would be very skeptical of putting anybody that I cared about into this professional industry at a young age. I would support it as a hobby, as an amateur pursuit, but to enter to the professional world is different."

The apprehension Bale has toward fame is interesting, given that he seemed to navigate it himself so well as a child -- and that he continues to be cast in would-be major blockbusters. Next summer he'll appear in both Terminator Salvation, a continuation of the Terminator franchise set in the future, and Public Enemies, a period crime drama in which he plays Melvin Purvis opposite Johnny Depp's famous bank robber John Dillinger.

However, we're here to talk about the The Dark Knight, and on that subject, Bale happily obliges, and indeed goes on at length about some of his character's trickier psychology. In the film, Batman is faced with his toughest enemy yet: the anarchic Joker, played of course by the late Heath Ledger.

"There is a great dynamic," Bale says, for the first time looking slightly excited. "The Joker is just gleeful to come up against Batman because everyone else has been too easy. He's intelligent, a psychopath, he's intent on chaos and destruction -- and if that means self-destruction, so be it. It's impossible to leverage him because he isn't looking for anything but living in the moment and living in that anarchy. He's completely uncompromising, as is Batman, but Batman does have this one rule: that he will not kill. But he's in conflict often with himself about how far and how violent he can be because does embrace violence to a degree and he has to embrace that with the altruism to do good in the inherited philanthropy of his parents. But the Joker comes closer than anybody has to provoking Batman to break that one rule."

That rule -- that Batman won't kill anyone -- is something that fascinates Bale. "What is the quickest way to get rid of the Joker and make sure that no one else dies' Well that is to kill him, but that goes against [his rule]," Bale says. "But there's an ethical question: wouldn't he be saving others if he broke his own rule, and at what point do the principles become selfish'"

Bruce Wayne's motives for being Batman are also worth exploring. "There is an argument for impure motives," he says. "There is Bruce Wayne's altruism, but there is also an argument for this being a selfish endeavor, curing himself of his own pain and anger through the character of Batman."

The answer to that could be that Bruce doesn't want to stay Batman forever: his stated goal is to clean up Gotham's crime to a reasonable degree and then give up the suit. To help hurry the process, Bruce begins to support Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), a crusading district attorney who's not afraid to fight crime out in the open.

"He wishes for Batman to become obsolete," Bale says of Bruce, "and the beacon of hope for that is Harvey Dent. If a public official can stamp down on corruption and crime then Batman is not necessary and he can return to his life as Bruce Wayne. [The problem is, that life] has basically become a void: he's a lonely man. The more he commits to Batman the more he pays the price in his personal life."

And in that vein, when push comes to shove, perhaps giving up the mask might not be so easy. "While I think it's an ideal for Bruce to leave this Batman character behind, I think it's become an addiction," Bale says.

None of this would've worked had the Joker been a letdown. But as played by Ledger, the character has become the center of much of the buzz surrounding the film, inspiring many critics to predict Ledger will win the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for Network in 1977.

"We wanted to stay serious and dramatic with each of the portrayals of every single character, and Heath was wonderful with that," Bale says. "He completely immersed himself and he stayed under. When he was the Joker, he was the Joker throughout. He has portrayed him in a way that it has not been portrayed before; it has this kind of anarchic punk Clockwork Orange approach."

In fact, he's almost too good: "Heath has done such a good job that if Chris decides to make a third movie he said a real challenge would be, how do you up the ante with any villain after Heath's Joker'"

But while everybody gapes at the Joker's clown makeup, facial tics, and stringy green-tinged hair, check out Batman's suit. It's been totally revamped from the first film in a way that makes sense to the plot and fully avoids the campy, there-are-nipples-on-the-batsuit quality of Batman Forever and -- ugh -- Batman and Robin.

"It was much more comfortable, heavy, but much more comfortable," Bale confirms. "There was ten parts to this one and there were three to the original. It was more mobile, it was compatible with the fighting method that we used, whereas in the first one I had to fight against the suit to do the fight sequences. In every way it was more advanced -- and also it's in keeping with images that the military have of future soldiers."

And the best part' He could actually turn his head. "There were certain just very personal requests that I had made, and I know Chris had been adamant about how you've got to be able to move the head, you know' Batman has never moved his head in any of the other movies."

The Dark Knight opens today, but already the buzz machine is moving on. Next week, Terminator Salvation -- in which Bale plays future leader of men John Connor -- will get a big boost of hype from San Diego's Comic-Con. What attracted him to the role was the same thing that attracted him to Batman. "It's a fresh take, [but it's also] continuing the mythology. Not ignoring the mythology. I see there is great potential for reinvention, revitalization of the mythology of it and that is what I am aiming to do. That is what I feel our responsibility is. Otherwise there is no point in making it."

It's Public Enemies that Bale seems especially excited about. "[Director] Michael Mann is one of the most thorough researchers that I have ever come across, so I had more than an abundance of information," he says. "I traveled to the FBI headquarters, went to Quantico, met with the family of the character I was playing. We shot at all of the locations where the actual events took place. It was uncanny on a number of occasions that we were filming on the dates that the actual gunfights had happened. It stays true to the events, but as with many movies, when you are trying to condense a story into two hours, there is some license taken. But believe me: Michael is like an incredible private investigator in the way that he approaches his moviemaking and the way that he finds the details. I had a fantastic time working with him."

Is he worried that playing two other potentially iconic characters will take away from Batman' No, if only because the fate of a third Chris Nolan-directed, Christian Bale-starring Batman movie is still up in the air. "I am only interested in playing Batman in the way that Chris Nolan likes him portrayed," Bale warns. But he's enormously proud of Knight. "I think that this second movie has surpassed the first, and it stands as a great movie regardless of genre."

Nicole Kolinski contributed to this article.