Christian Bale (29 page)
Authors: Harrison Cheung
Before long he was too sick to stay at the New York home he shared with Gloria Steinem, and in July he was admitted to New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Steinem visited him every day. However, his condition worsened and in
November 2003, Gloria and the doctors made the decision to transfer David back to Los Angeles to be nearer to his family. He was admitted to the Santa Monica Health Care Center, where he remained until his death on December 30, 2003, at the age of sixty-two. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific.
Following David's death, Gloria wrote a moving tribute to her husband. In fact the memorial was so glowing that anyone reading it would've thought David was on the verge of sainthood. It was in sharp contrast to the David Bale other people knew over the yearsâa confidence trickster who had left behind two broken families as he pushed and pushed his only son toward the fame and fortune he himself had always aspired to.
Gloria wrote:
In 1991, he moved with his two younger children, Christian and Louise, then teenagers, to Los Angeles where they could continue their careers in film and theater. Soon, animal rights activists in the South Bay became aware of a tall man in a black shirt and black sneakers who brought injured animals into clinics, found homes for strays, and stopped on freeways to rescue hurt animals or set their bodies aside with words of respect. Indeed, he tried never to pass a living thing in need, whether this meant driving a homeless person to a shelter, helping over-burdened single mothers in the street, or fighting against developers to save wetlands for migrating birds. As an activist, he also lobbied for such issues at the upper levels of politics and society
. As
an individual, he took loving care and gave a home to many stray cats, any birds or migrating ducks who visited the backyard, and a series of dogs, including an L.A. street dog named Mojo who soon was traveling back and forth by plane to New York when David also began to live there. David Bale walked lightly on this earth, with few possessions, a great heart, and a rare ability to cross boundaries between people,
countries, even species. He had a gift for living in the present, and for giving others the love and self-belief that he had missed as a child. If each of us who loved him nurtures these qualities in ourselves, he will be with us still
.
Even though Gloria had written her glowing memorial of David, Christian has never made any comment about his father's passing. It was Gloria who made the announcement of David's death to the press and while Christian was mentioned in all of the obituaries in newspapers around the world, he remained silent.
The intensely private star instead threw himself into his next movie roleâ
Batman Begins
. In September 2003, just three months before he died, David was told that Christian had been cast as one of the world's greatest superheroes. He told Christian he was “achingly proud” of him, but they both knew deep down he wouldn't be around to see the movie.
The Machinist
opened in limited release on October 22, 2004, to mixed reviews and minimal box office success, grossing just over $1 million domestically. It was also Christian's first movie that wasn't particularly popular on video. This was not the kind of movie that people happily went to see after dinner or watched at home with a big bowl of popcorn. Christian's fans, by then aware that he was going to be the next Batman, seemed both horrified and impressed by his skeletal appearance. Here was an actor clearly committed to the cause of really living a role.
Robert De Niro had won an Oscar for his weight-fluctuating turn in
Raging Bull
. Tom Hanks had been nominated for an Oscar for his food-deprived turn in
Cast Away
. But if Christian expected any awards, he would be disappointed. He did not win any major acting award for
The Machinist
, even though it was a very showy role.
Meghan Lehmann of the
New York Post
wrote: “Anderson gives
The Machinist
a sickly noirish look that contributes to the creeping horrorâbut it's the emaciated Bale's spectral presence that leaves the imprint.”
Rolling Stone
's Peter Travers noted: “Director Brad Anderson tightens the screws of suspense but it's Bale's gripping, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance that holds you in thrall.”
Lisa Schwarzbaum of
Entertainment Weekly
seemed to take offense: “Bale exists all too large under the circumstances, a well-fed actor playing at emaciation for the sake of a fiction about a character whose torment is as unreadable as his vertebrae are countable.”
Filming for
Batman Begins
was scheduled to start on March 7, 2004, and Christian began preparing himself both physically and mentally for the role. And while Christian had not been so close to his father in recent months, he vowed to make Batman his best performance everâin memory of his dad.
Christian hamming it up, with his “Blue Steel” look.
A Balance of Darkness
and Light
“What I see in Christian is the ultimate embodiment of Bruce Wayne. He has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for.”
âChristopher Nolan, Director,
Batman Begins
“It makes absolutely no difference who plays Batman, there's nobody at home. The character is the ultimate suit. Garb him in leather or rubber, he's an action hero. Put him in civilian clothes, he's a nowhere man.”
âRoger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times
O
n Thursday, September 11, 2003, Warner Bros. made the announcement that Christian Bale was next in line to play the ultimate American antihero, Batman, in the upcoming movie
Batman Begins
. It was the climactic moment to years of excitement and speculation, with names as diverse and unexpected as Jude Law, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Pearce, and Ben Affleck originally bandied about within the studio, leaking out to excite the worldwide rumor mill better known as the Internet.
How important was the choice of the next Batman? It may not have been as historic as a puff of white smoke from the Vatican
or as earth-shattering as Barack Obama's being elected the first black president of the United States, but the fact that it had taken Warner Bros. six years to get the fifth Batman movie off the ground was proof of how much activity was going on behind the scenes in reviving the studio's “largest asset,” one of its most profitable movie franchises.
In the world according to Hollywood, one could forgive Warner Bros. for generating the kind of fever and excitement over a casting decision not seen since the selection of Scarlett O'Hara in
Gone with the Wind
. Back then, it was scandal when the British actress Vivien Leigh was cast as all-out Southern Belle Scarlett, beating such well-known names as Norma Shearer, Katherine Hepburn, and Paulette Goddard to the coveted role.
Now it was another Brit, Christian Bale, with his uncanny knack of mimicking American accents, who shocked Hollywood when it was announced that he would be donning the Batsuit, following a long line of U.S. stars from TV show actor Adam West to the big-screen incarnations of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney, who had all tried to make Batman their own.
Weeks before Warner Bros. made its choice,
The Hollywood Reporter
had discovered that the studio would be holding test readings with several contenders for the role of the Dark Knight. The short list of young men competing to fill Batman's codpiece included: Hugh Dancy (
Black Hawk Down
), Eion Bailey (
Fight Club
), Henry Cavill (
The Tudors
and finally,
Superman
!), Billy Crudup (
Almost Famous
), Jake Gyllenhaal (
Donnie Darko, Prince of Persia
), Joshua Jackson (
Dawson's Creek
), Cillian Murphy (
28 Days Later
), and, of course, Christian Bale.
Directing this new Batman project would be acclaimed English director Christopher Nolan, who scored both a critical and commercial hit in 2000 with his sophisticated indie murder mystery,
Memento
. In 2002, Nolan followed up with another hit,
Insomnia
, proving to Hollywood that he could handle a big star like Al Pacino in a big studio production. Nolan had originally wanted his
Memento
star, Guy Pearce, as his Batman but, when Pearce declined, the hunt for the Caped Crusader was on.
Of the eight contenders for Batman, Christian already had a huge advantage. He was the biggest star on the Internet thanks to our years of campaigning, powered by the Baleheads, and we had been actively pushing for the role for the past two years.
Entertainment Weekly
had crowned him King of the World Wide Web in their October 11, 1996, issue and from that point on every major entertainment trade magazine annually sang odes to the mystery of Christian Baleâthe Welsh-born actor who was enigmatically popular on the newest entertainment medium in spite of not having a single box office hit.
This disparity puzzled the studios. Who was Christian Baleâthe little known indie actor who could get his face on the cover of a magazine but did not have the clout to open a movie? Why was he so popular on the Internet? Studios often look to other mediums for signs of the next crossover star. That's why singers try to get on TV shows while TV actors try to get in movies. To actors, movie fame is still the Holy Grail of celebrity.
Christian's unusual fame was built on a new and untried medium. The Internet was unlike radio, television, or the movies because the audience could be interactive. This new audience could make their likes and dislikes known immediately and it was this interactivity that gave power to grassroots campaigns.
“Is Christian Bale too good to be true? Perhaps he's some sort of spiritual messiah, or a synthetic android simulation of the ideal human, but something has made Bale one of the most popular stars in the Internet firmamentâand it's not just his cheekbones.”
âMarc Mohan,
The Oregonian
Yet when I first told him about Batman, the role that would eventually catapult him to superstardom, Christian's initial reaction was far from enthusiastic. He despised American comics and he hated movie adaptations of comic books. He didn't want to be a movie star, and he thought even less of movie franchises. He physically pretended to gag whenever anyone would mention superheroes to him and it took months of convincing before he came to see that playing Batman made sense.
But while Christian was initially reluctant to being a superhero and trying to find less boring things elsewhere in his life, Hollywood knew it was time to resurrect one of their biggest money-making franchises of all time.
Three years before Warner Bros. even made their Batman casting decision, three Batman movie projects simmered in development. One project, tentatively titled
The Dark Knight
, was to be directed by indie director Darren Aronosky (
Requiem for a Dream
);
Batman Begins
by another highly praised indie director, Christopher Nolan (
Memento
); and the third was
Superman vs. Batman
to be directed by Wolfgang Peterson, who had had both critical and box office success with
The Perfect Storm
and
Air Force One
.
Mating a comic book project with an acclaimed, proven director seemed to be a smart move to revitalize the franchise, though in reality, for every success like a Sam Raimi-helmed
Spiderman
, there's a bomb like Ang Lee's
Hulk
. But all these projects looked perfect for Christian.
For Christian, hot off the critical acclaim of
American Psycho
, he was looking for meatier American roles. His villainous turn in
Shaft
had opened 2000 to mixed reviews and lackluster box office ratings. If he had a dream role, it was to play Anakin Sky-walker in the next
Star Wars
movie. Christian had grown up as a huge
Star Wars
fan and he was extremely disappointed when he lost the role of Obi Wan Kenobi to Ewan McGregor. So he
desperately wanted the role of a grown-up Anakin Skywalker because of the dramatic challenges of playing someone seduced by the Dark Side of the Force, transforming from Anakin to Darth Vader. For an actor like Christian, there could be no better mainstream role.
But from the start the prospects didn't look good for Christian to land the part of Skywalker. First of all, he was too old. Anakin Skywalker was supposed to be a couple of years younger than his future wife, Princess Amidala, played by Natalie Portman, who was seven years younger than Christian. Secondly, George Lucas was looking for an actor who would physically look like a grownup version of Jake Lloyd, the child actor who had played Anakin in
Star Wars: Phantom Menace
. For a number of months, it was rumored that Christian's old nemesis Leonardo DiCaprio would be the one to strap on the lightsaber.