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 Christian Bale
Spotlight By: Stephen Snart
In Rescue Dawn, the dramatization of real-life POW Dieter Dengler’s daring escape from a Vietnamese prison camp, lead actor Christian Bale rides wild rapids on a flimsy raft, hangs onto a helicopter, gets dragged by a cart, bites into a snake and eats a bowl of bugs. But none of the grueling physicality that went into playing the role seems to have fazed the 33-year-old actor. When asked if the ordeal was trying he responds coolly, “At times it was but it never takes long to recover.” Presumably his tongue is somewhat in his cheek when he says this but his delivery is straight-faced and unflappable. His quick dismissal of the physical hardships instantly illuminates two of the reasons he has been hailed as one of his generation’s greatest actors: his fastidious work ethic and his ability to mask acting as naturalism. These two qualities are part of what made him the perfect choice (the other is his smoldering good looks) to take over the role of the dark knight when Christopher Nolan revamped the flailing franchise with the $200 million-plus grossing Batman Begins in 2005. Shooting has just gotten underway in Chicago on the sequel (entitled The Dark Knight) and is on track for a July 2008 release date. It marks the first time in his 21-year film career that he will revisit a role on screen. He’s quick to warn that the character has developed quite a bit (“Moving on, evolving, a lot of things are happening.”) and that he won’t be merely sleepwalking through a paycheck. Although he does add that, “slipping into it is surprisingly easily.” Witnessing a single frame of Bale’s gaunt, haggard face in Rescue Dawn makes it instantly evident that he didn’t sleepwalk through his role there either. In fact, he even seemed to enjoy some of the more off-putting demands. The stomach-churning scene in which he merrily wolfs down a bowl of bugs actually sounds like the one instant where he had to do the least amount of acting. “I would go to the local markets and oh, man, the things you could buy in there! I would get these bags full of insects. You go and they have these big fried insects: grasshoppers, maggots, whatever the hell it is, with salt and pepper and herbs on them and stuff. They’re very tasty, just like having a bag of chips.” While he does concede that the ones he ate on film weren’t seasoned at all, he doesn’t appear to have had any qualms about it. He cites the film’s small crew and tight-knit cast as the main reason it was so easy to be relaxed enough to pull off the more emotionally and physically strenuous demands of the shoot without exposing the artifice. Filming Rescue Dawn gave Bale the chance to work with legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog, but his draw to the film was routed most strongly in the character of Dieter himself. “[It’s] purely this one man’s ... |
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