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Recently Released In Theaters Reviews
2008 FALL MOVIE PREVIEW Blindness How to Lose Friends & Alienate People Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist Flash of Genius Beverly Hills Chihuahua Forever Strong Eagle Eye Miracle at St. Anna Choke Nights in Rodanthe My Best Friends Girl Lakeview Terrace Battle in Seattle Igor Recently Added Spotlights Clark Gregg Sean Faris Charlize Theron Stuart Townsend Justin Hartley Samuel L. Jackson Patrick Wilson Kerry Washington Meg Ryan Jada Pinkett Smith Eva Mendes Debi Mazar Alan Ball Nicolas Cage Anna Faris |
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 Christian Bale
Interview By: Michael Dance 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, ... |
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