Christian Bale (28 page)

The character's name was an homage to Trent Reznor, lead singer of the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Brad Anderson told a reporter: “The original script had a quote from some Trent Reznor song at the beginning. I think Scott always envisioned the film as more industrial and maybe Nine Inch Nails would actually do the soundtrack.”

Christian knew immediately he wanted the part. He became obsessed with Reznik and even began having strange dreams about the character.

Christian revealed: “I spent weeks staring at the wall in my house out of depression because of things that had gone wrong and the choices I had made. When I read
The Machinist
, I just went: ‘Wow! This is perfect.' I was having dreams about the
character and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt like this one was going to save my arse and pull me out of the depressed state I had got into.”

But despite wanting the role there was no guarantee that Christian would get it. He would have to work hard to impress director Brad Anderson—someone whose movies he had previously refused to watch.

Christian faced a huge challenge. Because the character Reznik had not slept for a year, he looked ill and underweight, his every waking minute an unremitting nightmare of confusion, paranoia, guilt, and anxiety. Christian needed to lose weight for the role. Not a problem. From as early as 1987's
Empire of the Sun
when he lost weight for Spielberg to portray a concentration camp prisoner, Christian was renowned in Hollywood for being able to transform himself for any role.

But this time he took things to extremes. He lost a staggering 65 lbs., existing on just water, an apple, and a cup of coffee a day with a glass of whiskey sometimes in the evening. He explained: “Firstly you just drink a lot of water because it makes you feel full. Then you do substitution when you feel hungry—go and read instead. Or draw. Things that kill time.”

But Christian still found it tough being around food or watching anyone else eating. He revealed: “There's an initial irritability because of the restraint you are putting on yourself. That's very difficult because you're still used to seeing friends for dinner and going out and everything being about food and drink. In the end I had to stop going out. I realized that wasn't going to work. I'd do a bit of eating hardly anything and losing 5lbs and then I'd put on 7lbs bingeing one night because I'd have a couple of drinks. So I decided no more social life, no more friends, no more dinners, no more drinks. It got very hard so I just avoided everything. In fact, every time I smelled some great dish, I became this drooling beast that just wanted to eat everything I could get my hands on.
So I couldn't go out at all. My life was like that, pretty much, except for the smoking and some whiskey I had each night.”

As Christian withdrew from the world and became more and more like his character Reznik, the process became easier for him. He added: “I guess it's the stomach shrinking. Once I stopped running to lose weight, my legs got feeble—I just sat for hours without moving. I began to enjoy the mental state I was in because as my weight got lower the moods just disappeared. It does change you mentally and it did give me a noticeably different mental outlook on the world. I became very calm because you have no energy to deal with anything else except the basic necessities of life. Nothing made me anxious or upset. You couldn't get me angry at all. I could just sit still for hours without moving a muscle. It did feel like some spiritual mission I was on.”

Christian also refused pleas from Sibi, David, and me to let a doctor monitor his crash diet, choosing instead to dose himself with vitamins. “I always felt in control. Anyway, what doctor's going to tell me to keep going? I knew if I went to see one I would be scared into not going as far as I wanted. I knew I looked skinny and it was a weird feeling because you're disconnecting from this thing down below you. But I knew I could stop whenever I wanted.”

David was not convinced. Both he and Louise were worrying about possible organ failure. “You must say something to him! It's a source of extreme worry and concern to everybody as to why Christian is so angry all the time.” David would beg me, but we both knew how stubborn Christian could be. If his own wife and father couldn't talk him out of this, nobody would. Again, it seemed that David's unique parenting skills had led to Christian's single-mindedness.

Christian admitted after the movie was released that director Anderson never actually asked him to lose all that weight and get
down to 120 lbs.—a shockingly low weight for someone 6'1". It was his decision to make himself look anorexic for the role.

He revealed: “It was simply the best thing I'd read in a long time and I hadn't worked in a year and a half. But I knew it'd be tough and it was. The director certainly never asked me to do it but I just felt the physical side was very important. After all, this guy is meant to look like he is on the brink of death and that really is a challenge in itself. I started doing it gradually, then I did become obsessed with it and thought: ‘Maybe I can actually hit the weight which is mentioned in the screenplay.' I did it and on the very day I was supposed to be that weight, so I was very pleased about that.”

Christian might've been pleased with himself about hitting his target weight but to everyone else the transformation was shocking, even to costar Jennifer Jason Leigh. Although she later admitted she was even more horrified when he started to put the weight back on by eating donuts! She revealed: “When he started to eat again we warned him: ‘Start slow, eat poached eggs and raw foods.' Then we watched in horror as he started with donuts!”

Even Christian later admitted in interviews that he would probably never again go to such extremes for a movie role. He seemed to realize the strain he was putting his body under and admitted he also did not want to be seen as an actor who tried to get attention through gimmicks.

He confessed: “I seriously doubt I would do what I did for
The Machinist
ever again. Certainly not to that degree. I would lose weight for a part but I wouldn't take it that far again because I think I would be really asking for trouble although I think a second time would also be less of a challenge because I know I can do it. There was that challenge of: ‘Am I actually able to do this?' Now I've answered that question. And I would be worried if I did it a second time it would turn into a gimmicky thing, people would say: ‘Oh, he's the guy who loses a lot of weight for
movies.' I can't envision there being an awful lot of other parts where it would be so essential. But you know, on
The Machinist
, my wife did get to witness what my ass is going to look like when I'm 90! Not a pretty sight.”

But while things were once again beginning to work out on the professional front, personally Christian was still struggling. After years of working on Christian's career, we were done professionally. From my point of view, I had faithfully worked on Christian's career for many years. Promises were made. Promises were broken. I could see how he was treating his father, his mother, his family, and I thought to myself, “If he could treat his own family like that, what chance do I have that he'd treat me fairly?”

To add insult to injury, Christian demanded that I sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). An NDA is a document that celebrities often make their employees sign to secure confidentiality. However, it was part of Christian's odd sense of entitlement that he'd think I would sign an NDA while we were still figuring out what he was going to pay me, and what my role would be in his production company. The NDA was, in effect, a gag order. If I didn't like the results, I could never complain—to my family, my friends, to the press, or to a court. On one of Christian's many calls to me about the NDA, he bellowed, “Sign it! I deserve this!”

That was the end. He
deserved
it? After I had launched his career to become the biggest star on the Internet? To put him in an orbit where he could seize
Batman
? What did I deserve? I had been his friend for so many years, but he didn't stop to think or ask why I'd be reluctant to sign such a draconian document. His sense of entitlement was extreme.

David begged me to sign the NDA. Christian had actually demanded that everyone in his family sign such a document—again, something particularly outrageous to require of a family member.
But David had raised his son to think he could do no wrong. The end result was the unraveling of many of his family ties. “Between true friends, words are not needed.” That card from Christian seemed like it was a long time ago.

I didn't realize I had built a reputation in Hollywood over the years. But many industry people asked me how I could bear to work for Christian for so long. His temper had become well known, his demanding nature notorious. Whenever people asked me, I always thought back to a line from
Macbeth
:

I suppose David's flair for Shakespeare and the melodramatic had rubbed off on me a little.

A couple years ago, a friend of mine in L.A. asked me if I had seen the HBO show
Entourage
. I had not, and in fact, I had made a point of avoiding it. Something about a rising young actor being loyal to his inner circle of friends rang particularly false to me.

“You have to see it,” she said. “Don't you know the character Lloyd was based on you?”

I don't know if that was the case or not.
Entourage
is one of those slices of Hollywood life where everyone can see a piece of reality in it. But I had to snicker when I read about Lloyd Lee, a “Chinese American assistant who has a demanding and verbally abusive boss.” That definitely sounded familiar . . .

It was a tough choice, but after nearly ten years working for Christian and taking care of his family—first as his Web designer and then as his personal assistant and publicist—I wasn't having fun anymore. After Christian pointedly turned down
The Tonight Show
, there just wasn't any joy in his accomplishments. I was tired of dealing with the Bale family dramas and Christian's tantrums, which had become the soundtrack to our lives. It was no
longer rewarding. I had been offered work with another rising star, Jake Gyllenhaal, and decided to practice my Internet marketing outside of the House of Bale.

Surprisingly, Christian gave me a nicely worded reference letter, which read in part:

It only took me five years of therapy to get past my Bale years. My therapist would describe my condition as post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was very bad timing. Christian was furious at my departure as I was one of the few people who understood him and helped buffer his way in Hollywood. Ironically, Christian couldn't even exert any financial pressure on me since I was still patiently waiting for his “deferred payment” arrangements to kick in. You could say that his family circle was bullied into obedience—the rich relation and all. But I could part ways without signing the NDA, which represented my freedom.

The timing was also bad because David had fallen ill and had been diagnosed with brain lymphoma, a type of cancer that begins in the lymphocytes of the immune system.

With all the turmoil going on in his life at the time, Christian found it easier to withdraw into himself and lose the weight needed for the role in such a short amount of time. As he got skinnier and skinnier and more withdrawn, it was easier for him
to cut himself off from the outside world, like Reznik, and ignore the problems around him.

He refused to take my calls and found it hard to accept that his father was dying, even when he was admitted to the leading cancer care center in New York because the cancer was spreading so quickly. Instead, he immersed himself completely in the role as preproduction on the movie began in early April 2003.

With Christian completely immersed in his roles and focusing on his own marriage, he now didn't have as much time for his father, the man who had once controlled every aspect of his life. Christian was now his own man, picking his own projects and living in his own house with his own family. So David began spending more and more time on the East Coast to be with his wife, Gloria. He would still check in with his son regularly. But Christian admits that while he was filming
The Machinist
, he had so little energy he rarely spoke or interacted with anyone off the movie set apart from his Sibi. The movie was also shot more than 6,000 miles away from David, in Spain in May and June.

As David became sicker after being diagnosed in April, the calls became less frequent. David complained to friends about not being in close contact with his famous son. He called me one evening as woeful as King Lear. “I miss the laughter,” he said.

He also missed having his family by his side as his doctor and hospital visits became more and more frequent. He still kept his spirits up though, joking with the doctors and nurses. In one of my last conversations with David, he told me that he wanted to be buried back in South Africa. He wanted Nelson Mandela to speak at his funeral to tell the world what a humanitarian he was. David's illusions of grandeur remained intact, it seemed.