With all the media buzz and anticipation surrounding Batman Begins, we still know very little about Christian Bale – the man who unveiled the dark side of Batman for us.
With all the media buzz and anticipation surrounding the flick, we've heard very little about Christian Bale – the man who unveiled the dark side of Batman for us.
Christian Bale brings Bruce Wayne from inside the super-sleek, high-tech Batsuit. He makes his vulnerable superhero with issues, the guy who is easy to relate to.
Christian Bale shot to child stardom in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, then moved on to a grown-up career filled with menace and distortion. He was hand-picked for the role of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, then lost it to Leonardo DiCaprio and then won it back again!
Bale's other film credits include the apocalyptic dragon tale “Reign of Fire” and a role as a racist killer in the update of “Shaft.”
And you just can help but notice the fact that psychopathic investment banker, Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho sounds pretty much like Batman… Talk about coincidence, Christian Bale!
In one interview, Christian Bale remarked as an actor he tries to avoid stereotypes.
“I’d done American Psycho, and I bulked up purely for that part,” he said, “It was a nice way to kill that dead by just destroying your body completely.”
Preparing to such a physically demanding character as Batman was not easy. Christian Bale is the first actor since Adam West who is the same height as the original Batman comic book character. According to the comics, Batman is six foot two. Training for the role, Bale bulked up to 220 pounds.
“You do get a lot of nervous energy. I did actually start to feel I was putting my body under too much pressure because I put on 100 pounds in five months. You get big mood swings, but not such a bad thing when you're playing this darker version of Batman.”
For his role of Batman, Christian Bale went from playing an emaciated 120-pound waif in The Machinist to a 220-pound superhero in Batman Begins - all in about six months.
"It's not something I'd really ever want to do again, but it's a novelty to have done it once," Christian said, according to Yahoo.com reports.
"What Christian has, he has this extreme level of self-discipline, of dedication and intensity, and you can see it in his eyes," said Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan.
"It allows the audience to accept that this guy can transform himself into a superhero, which is a pretty extreme thing to ask an actor to convey."
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