If nothing else, this John H. Richardson Esquire interview with Christian Bale paints a definitive portrait of a man — or at least the portrait he wants you to see. You might think he comes off as an asshole, you might appreciate the directness and honesty about his craft and perspective on the film industry’s day-to-day circus, but whatever side you take, you can’t deny that a unique persona is revealed, which can be seen as a breath of fresh air in the overly “produced” spread of awards season.
I’m reminded slightly of Mo’Nique’s consistent “it’s not about the politics” stance of last season. But Bale is a guy I think I’d relish interviewing, if only BECAUSE he’s so challenging in an interview setting. Any journalist looking for quick sound bytes would be at the mercy of unexpected and unwanted ridicule in the way the actor takes to disassembling the process. I found it utterly compelling and delightful, though, as I think we all understand the level of B.S. shoveled in this realm, despite this or that passion that keeps the fire lit.
Personally, I think this kind of piece makes Bale singular in the Oscar fray, but I wonder how voters might respond to the frankness. Will they be put off? Will they breathe a sigh and secretly feel relieved they’re not alone, or that someone like Bale will happily be quoted on that opinion? I don’t know.
Like this. Is this a secretly held, buried truth that actors try and avoid?:
Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise. As an actor, you’re giving it up, you’re at the mercy of so many other people. So are you truly reaching the lofty goals? No, of course you’re not…You know, I’ve been doing this quite a long time. It doesn’t make me feel special. But I actually love it more for the reality of how it is done, the sinew and the bone of how it’s really put together.
Or how about this exchange:
BALE: I’m not on a couch having therapy. And it’s very limiting if I have to be able to relate every damn thing in somebody else’s life to something that’s happened in mine. At the end of the day, I’m faking it. Pure imagination, and it’s only phony if you don’t go far enough with it. You can become obsessive and it can get to the point where you’re almost losing yourself. You’ve become a vessel. And holy shit, things start happening. And I’m hating the way I’m sounding right now, because I sound like a tosser, but that’s my secret ambition.
ESQUIRE: To become a vessel.
BALE: Yes, but I don’t believe in revealing that.
ESQUIRE: Why?
BALE: Just do it! Don’t talk about it, get on with it.
ESQUIRE: But you’re a fucking actor! You’re in the self business!
BALE: It’s the opposite of self! It’s actually saying, “I don’t stand a chance being myself. I’ve gotta create somebody else in order to communicate. If I remove myself from all of my own memories and inhibitions and create another character — holy shit! I can reach out and communicate in that way.” So to me, it’s actually about trying to fucking destroy the self, and then you might be able to hit something. There’s some quote, I think it’s Oscar Wilde, “An artist puts nothing of himself into his art.”
I’ve heard of Bale detesting the “profile” piece. He doesn’t like the narrative approach to interview. As he tells Richardson, he’ll tell his story, he’s not going to let a journalist do it. Sure, he comes off incredibly sensitive to the matter, and he is, indeed, slinging insults with cracks about “practicing writing a novel.” But you know what? I wouldn’t say he’s far off the mark, either, however prickly he may be about it.
I love the balls Richardson shows throughout (though who knows if he actually asked some of these questions the way he did or if he just wrote it up in a certain way). And the whole interview plays out like a game of hide and seek, Bale dodging personal inquiries but teasing them when not really asked, all leading up to the actor’s big reveal at the end, regarding the swanky Santa Monica hotel at which the session took place:
BALE: You know the reason I picked this place?
ESQUIRE: Why?
BALE: ‘Cause it has nothing to do with my life. I never come here, ever. It’s as far removed from any place that I would ever go to. And that’s exactly why I chose it. ‘Cause it has nothing to do with me.
Essential reading. Have a look here.
[Photo: Esquire]
Comments
32 responses to “Christian Bale races himself”
Bale is so winning this thing. The guy just tells it like it is, and I appreciate his guarded sense of privacy. Who cares about selling your personality? Performance should and does matter.
Great interview. He seems to me like a normal human being that happens to be an actor.
The title of the interview ” Christian Bale may kill someone yet,” doesn’t make any sense and only confirms Bale’s suspicions about these actor-profile pieces. Or am I being up-tight? I think the title is unfortunate and I’d be pissed if I was Bale.
I hope someone asks Bale about his departure from the Malick film.
I kind of felt the same way about the title, Gittes. Humbly, I’d suggest my headline here as more applicable.
So Bale is going the Mo’Nique route in terms of campaigning? Can’t blame him. In many regards we would all be better off if we knew considerably less of an actor, particularly one who is a star. Let the work speak for itself. I can appreciate that.
I must admit that I find the straight transcribed interviews the most interesting to read.
Why do people keep asking Bale about his “method” of acting? The guy is a bit insecure about it because he never received formal training, so he does it the only way he knows how. Move on folks.
Bale comes off as a pretty cool guy in this. It’s the interviewer who sounds like a douchebag.
Oh he’s such a martyr suffering for the greater cause of actors not wanting to be bothered by intrusive media. Their questions during an interview are always unwelcome. Since the actors have to submit to the politics of the studio system to support their latest completed endeavor. Bale so brave, so strong, so the real deal – I have tears while typing this because he deserves the Oscar for his body (of work).
I sense sarcasm. People always say “why is he whining?” he’s rich!” Well, to some, money doesn’t matter.
Typical “witty” Esquire interview title. Great interview despite that. Go Bale.
To me Bale just sounds like a guy you could sit down in a pub with and enjoy a good pint and that’s always cool. I don’t find anything he says here all that different from other stuff I’ve read from different actors. I’ve heard it before in other interviews, just said in different ways. Still, any actor brings himself into his role, whether he wants to or not. He’s always there, as far as I can tell. Even the greatest actors do that.
Yeah, Bale sounds awesomely unpretentious. I mean, all actors are pretentious, but I love that he’s painfully aware of it, and tries to avoid it. People mock his dedication, but I find it admirable and kind of cool.
I read this interview a couple of days ago and found it intriguing, entertaining at times, but for the most part honest.
I love how dangerous Bale must seem to the media. After his rampage on the Terminator set and the domestic abuse stuff that came out after TDK, it’s almost like the main stream media views him as some kind of monster, a ticking time bomb set to go off at any moment. The title of the article says it all.
Ultimately, I think it is Bale’s unwillingness to play along and say all the things he is supposed to say that makes him seem so unsettling. Unlike some of his peers, he refuses to be airbrushed. I love that for as ferocious as he may seem, even he admitted in the interview he didn’t have the balls to tell the studio he won’t do another promotional interview.
I give the interviewer credit for being aggressive. A lot of interviews with Bale end with the interviewer retreating from Bale’s persona, but this guy seemed ready to go.
Bale makes acting seem like such a joyless and humorless activity, like in some ways DiCaprio. There’s none of that exuberance or enjoyment that seeps through when talking to someone like Juliette Binoche or Julianne Moore who give the impression that its a breeze and that they enjoy it quite a bit.
Yeah, he seems really self-serious and gloomy. His best performance is still in “Empire of the Sun.”
I completely agree with the previous two posters. While I do like the Esquire interview, as a whole, I’ve never been a fan of Bale’s personality. He does make it seem like acting is a massive burden and so unenjoyable.
I would say that almost all good actors, or anybody in the arts profession for that matter, consider their line of work to be someone of a burden and in many cases tough. As a common citizen conditioned to the average everyday-ness of life, we look at these people making tons of money just shopping themselves.
Whether it’s actually there or not, these artists feel like they have some kind of responsibility or obligation to the people and themselves. You have to remember that they have vastly different standards of relativity, importance, and standards that we do.
Watch professional sports. When Tom Brady or Kobe Bryant yells at his team or throws his helmet, should we say “why should he get mad, he makes a ton of money,” no because that competitiveness, with others, and more importantly oneself, makes sports and art what it is to us.
I’ve always been a fan of Bale, ever since I first saw him in (I’m sorry) “Little Women.” Even at a young age, I was aware of his screen presence and his dedication to the role; you might say that’s one of the first times I noticed “acting,” even though it’s more like “feeling.”
I haven’t yet seen “The Fighter” but I completely support any and all award campaigns that may come.
And let’s all not forget how sexy he was in American Psycho!
I look forward to a meatier role for a broken Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises.
What a douche.
when i read the WHOLE interview ,i think “it’s an interesting and entertaining interview” and Bale has personality
Scott W., I don’t sports and acting are comparable at all really.
I just wrote this entire synopsis of a possible sequel to Empire of the Sun, with the intention of calling it THE EMPIRE OF THE SUN STRIKES BACK! But after writing most of it I realized that that title would imply the Japanese have taken revenge, not the other way around. Oh well, I was bored. Give it your own title…
Bale’s character (Jim) has never gotten over the horrors he faced as a child during the war, and is now an unemployed adult mired in depression and alcoholism. During one long night of debauchery he comes across a group of late-night rabblerousers crowding around a gaudy, adult-themed puppet show being performed in an alley behind a gentlemen’s club. The music from the show ends, the crowd staggers off, and Jim begins to dry heave near an adjoining wall. Suddenly a voice from the past calls out to him. He turns and sees the grizzled face of Basie, the American sailor (played by John Malkovich) who was his caretaker while in captivity as a child. The silence between them is deafening, the emotion overwhelming. Unable to convey his feelings to Jim through words, Basie performs a brief, improvised puppet routine that says more than words ever can.
Later Basie and Jim, both drunk, lean on one another for support as they drag themselves up to Basie’s dank apartment. Basie vomits violently on the floor before collapsing on a weathered mattress nearby. Jim sits across from him, taking occasional sips from his flask as he studies the mess of a man before him.
The next morning Basie awakens to the smell and sizzle of freshly cooked bacon. Whereas once he cooked for Jim, Jim is now cooking breakfast for him. The moment fills him with emotion and a tear slides down his cheek as he offers a faint smile, perhaps his first since the war.
As the two eat they begin to discuss the atrocities inflicted upon them and their friends during the war. By the last sip of coffee, they have decided to seek revenge on those who made life rough for them so many years ago. A training montage ensues. Jim does one-armed pushups and punches an old boxing bag. Basie begins amassing weaponry, from Chinese stars to bazookas. The montage concludes with both men using Basie’s puppets for target practice, high-fiving one another as the final puppet explodes in slow-motion.
The rest of the film is them traveling to Japan and reeking havoc on their past tormentors. Some are simply shot, others maimed, and some tortured in a variety of ways. Jim begins to wonder if all this revenge is really helping him or hurting him, as Basie’s methods become more and more…unsound. One night Jim comes home from a bar, having taken a drink for the first time in all those months since he happened upon Basie’s puppet show. He enters their Tokyo motel room to find Basie performing a grotesque puppet show with dead Japanese bodies as the puppets. They appear to be dancing to the music from a nearby radio. It’s unclear exactly where Basie’s hands are, but he seems to be controlling them well enough. Horrified by what they’ve become, Jim eyes his flask momentarily before casting it aside. Realizing that his old friend cannot be saved, he backs slowly out into the hall as the bloody corpses continue their grim dance. Music swells as the door slams shut. Credits roll. Four months later the film receives 9 Oscars, including the first honorary Oscar for Best Puppeteering.
wreaking havoc, not reeking. sigh.
Clearly your missing the dynamic of the individual that is not dissimilar in the respective professions Hardy.
I’m guessing that by your logic no one should ever be angry about not winning Best Actor or the Super Bowl because they have already been so blessed. But I do like that the main thesis you gathered from my post was comparing sports and acting. Insightful.
“Bale makes acting seem like such a joyless and humorless activity, like in some ways DiCaprio. There’s none of that exuberance or enjoyment that seeps through when talking to someone like Juliette Binoche or Julianne Moore who give the impression that its a breeze and that they enjoy it quite a bit.”
This is not true. Julianne Moore seemed utterly joyless in HANNIBAL, for example, because the story was gloomy and joyless and the character of Clarice Starling seemed trapped in a joyless existence. She certainly came across more steely, hard-bitten, and bitter than Jodie Foster’s Clarice. Bale seemed full of exuberance in all sorts of movies: LITTLE WOMEN or RESCUE DAWN, for example.
It’s really the script, and the actors’ understanding of the script, that determines joyfulness or joylessness. If you’re going to compare HANNIBAL or MAGNOLIA with LITTLE WOMEN, for example, it’s Moore, not Bale, who seems joyless and lacking in exuberance. But that was obviously a deliberate choice on her part, determined largely by the scripts and the directors’ intentions. DiCaprio’s not my favorite actor but he doesn’t seem joyless either except when the story is a gloomy, downbeat story. What’s joyless about him in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, for example? I know what’s joyless about him in SHUTTER ISLAND. You’re making an artificial distinction that doesn’t really exist, since all these actors modify their “exuberance levels” to suit the material.
Addendum: Okay, I think i’ve misread what you’re saying. You’re saying in interviews DiCaprio and Bale come off as joyless and gloomy. I don’t think they do. Maybe Binoche makes it seem like a breeze because she doesn’t often play the kind of parts that might be considered taxing. I can’t imagine a script like THE ENGLISH PATIENT or CHOCOLAT taxed her very hard. Maybe it’s more difficult for her when she plays more challenging roles in French films. Anyway, I don’t see Bale or DiCaprio projecting joylessness. Why you seem to want two guys to come across the same way as two girls is bizarre. Moore and Binoche come across with a different emotional register probably because THEY’RE WOMEN and the material they’re offered reflects that. What you take as their “it’s all a lark” attitude and lightness seems to me a reflection of their feminine natures. Presumably the movie CHOCOLAT was a lot lighter to play than RESCUE DAWN or SHUTTER ISLAND, and as a woman, Binoche was hired to project very different qualities from what a man would in the same situation.
I think that Bale and Leo are much better actors than Binoche (never got the hype) so I`m offended by comparions. Plus, Marion Cotillard is far superior French actress than Binoche, and another overrated one, Tautou.
That said, go Bale! I hope he wins. he and Garfield are my favorites in BSA category.
@HW
You yourself have examples of Moore doing taxing work and believe me Binoche has done more than her share too. But I find it offensive that you say ‘they’re women’ and don’t do as challenging work as the men.
It comes through the approach they have to acting. People who have desk-jobs and who sacrificed a life passion to make a money can be morose about their jobs, that is understandable. But these guys they are doing what they want and they just bear it like a crown of thorns.
Even in their performances on screen I never seem to get that they are enjoying themselves. They really think that putting their entire soul into each and every eye-squint is monumental dedication. They could certainly learn a thing or two about being loose on screen like the two ladies I mentioned.
Just this year, Binoche’s performance in Certified Copy pretty much blows anything Bale and DiCaprio might have done in their career clean out of the water.
Thanks Mr. Tapley for your words, and for your courage of recognizing that some writers are really unfair with actors, tagging them as something awful for the sake of selling their work. It’s incredible the bs that some of them write (like the title of the Esquire interview, for example). No wonder Bale is so sensitive with interviewers, I would too.
Considering what all his coworkers say about him Bale is really a great man, a gentleman, but with an intelligent and (very) naughty sense of humor, and also an intolerance to bs and arrogance that clearly is reflected in his interviews, and also misinterpreted by many.
He so deserves to win this Oscar, he already should have won one, or at least received a nomination.
And I don’t get why some people say that he makes acting look like a burden when he clearly said he loves the whole process. What is joyless for him is the fame and the celebrity status. Also annoying (really annoying!) are the “he gets tons of money, why is he complainning?” comments.
“But I find it offensive that you say ‘they’re women’ and don’t do as challenging work as the men.”
That is NOT what I said. I said they’re women and the qualities you call “joyfulness” or “joylessness” are more properly labelled “femininity” and “masculinity.” You’re basically complaining that DiCaprio and Bale are GUYS – who walk, talk, think, and behave like guys.
Nobody is going to hire Juliette Binoche to star in a movie like Rescue Dawn because that’s not a typically female human experience in the first place – what female Vietnam vet was there? Likewise, it’s impossible to imagine ANY man playing the Binoche character in Chocolat, because her “femaleness” is part and parcel of who the character IS. You can’t separate out a person’s sexuality and gender from their very identity as a human being. What you label “joylessness” isn’t…. it’s something else.
“Just this year, Binoche’s performance in Certified Copy pretty much blows anything Bale and DiCaprio might have done in their career clean out of the water.”
I highly doubt that – maybe it blows DiCaprio away, but again, it depends on the part: he’s well-cast in certain roles, even if he tends to be heavy-handed and IMO miscast in his Scorsese pictures. Binoche has her flaws too: they just aren’t the same flaws. If DiCaprio is too heavy-handed in some stuff, Binoche is too lightweight (and insufferably smug) in schlocky kitsch like Chocolat. If Binoche is great in an Abbas Kiarostami film, well, Bale was likewise great working for Werner Herzog or Terence Malick (directors of comparable talent to Kiarostami): on the other hand, Binoche and Bale alike are not as great when the material and the director is bad.
Anyway, Bale, Binoche, DiCaprio, and Moore are four very different performers – that you would lump the two guys together and the two women together doesn’t speak well for your observational abilities, since these actors really have very little in common with one another. Binoche and Moore aren’t particularly similar performers, and Bale and DiCaprio aren’t similar either. You need to open your eyes and pay more attention to what you’re watching, since you just lumped together names that don’t truly resemble each other at all.
“But these guys they are doing what they want and they just bear it like a crown of thorns.”
Bullshit. There is no “crown of thorns” in that interview: and if you think there is, you simply cannot read properly. Here’s a hint: the interviewer obviously liked him. A lot. The reporter and Bale were obviously enjoying taking the piss out of each other and teasing each other. If you didn’t get the playfulness of it, you weren’t reading it properly – probably because you lack a basic sense of humor (which would explain why you keep insisting Bale is a heavy, humorless performer – in fact there’s a lot of dry humor and wit in almost every one of his performances – even in something like The Machinist).
“Even in their performances on screen I never seem to get that they are enjoying themselves. They really think that putting their entire soul into each and every eye-squint is monumental dedication. They could certainly learn a thing or two about being loose on screen like the two ladies I mentioned.”
Wrong. Obviously if we can tell an actor is “enjoying himself,” his performance IS A FAILURE, since we’re focused on HIM instead of his CHARACTER. Sensing an actor’s enjoyment level is a sure sign we’re not immersed in the drama and the fictional world itself.
The two ladies are fine actresses, but they aren’t any better than Bale (he has a bigger range than either of them) – in addition to both giving their share of weak performances – and DiCaprio is just fine when he’s not being miscast. Again, I don’t care for DiCaprio in his heavy-handed roles, but Julianne Moore is no better than him in HER “heavy” roles, like the grisly and morbid Hannibal, where she was neither appealing nor lively (not that I blame her considering the whole movie was an unpleasant viewing experience & she was saddled with an awful script). I certainly don’t see anything any “lighter” or more “joyful” or “natural” about Moore in Hannibal than Bale in The Dark Knight or DiCaprio in his darkest roles. While I’d prefer DiCaprio to step away from those parts (i think he’s miscast in them) and do more things like Catch Me If You Can, I see no evidence Moore is any better when saddled with a relentlessly grim script. She only comes across as lively and joyful when the material affords her that opportunity – but so do Bale and DiCaprio when THEY do that kind of part. Maybe people (like you) have amnesia and don’t actually remember Moore’s bleaker, darker movies – they only remember her vivacious, charming characters and not her grim ones. But you picked a very poor example if you meant to contrast Moore with Bale and DiCaprio.