Christian Bale (19 page)

In fact, to David's great delight, Christian had split with his longtime English girlfriend, Natalie, and was now dating his costar Valentina Cervi. Campion's love letter assignment certainly must have helped! Christian took Cervi with him to Disney World when he was a presenter at the Discover Awards along with
Star Trek
star, Levar Burton. That was the first major event where Christian got to meet Baleheads in person and they reported back in cyberspace that Christian was charming, taller than expected, but had been spied chomping away on a turkey leg! Since his official bio said that he was a vegetarian (thanks to David), some fans were disappointed and posted their sentiments on Christian's Web site. “I thought he was a vegetarian!” cried a typical post. “I saw him smoking!” revealed someone who was at Disney World.

“I had no idea who the bloke I was presenting with was,” Christian later told me.

“That's Geordi La Forge from
Star Trek
! He wears those visors?” I was amused that Christian seemed hopeless when it came to recognizing any actors outside his circle.

Christian was fast getting the reputation for being an actor who got into character for his roles. He had to juggle between characters Ned and Stevie, as production on
The Portrait of a Lady
overlapped with
The Secret Agent
.

He told a reporter: “Because I was filming
Secret Agent
one day and then the next day I'd be rehearsing
Portrait of a Lady
and then straight back on
Secret Agent
, it was quite funny because I would realize just how different I was being. I'd never really realized that I did that before. But I did, on those, because I just would think: ‘Christ, if anyone from
Portrait of a Lady
came and saw me on this set,
Secret Agent
, they'd just think I was schizophrenic or something.'”

Metroland
, the third in his indie string, was a creative high point in Christian's career. It was also my first opportunity to work on the film's press materials. I designed the original poster and press kit, based on the London Underground logo, which eventually had to be changed from a circle to a square. Based on the book by Julian Barnes, Christian starred as a middle-aged Englishman, Chris Lloyd, who looks back at three stages in his life—as a teenager bored in “Metroland” suburbia, a struggling young photographer in Paris, and as a married-with-child father back in Metroland. A sexy drama costarring Emily Watson, the English actress who had won rave reviews for
Breaking the Waves
, Christian especially liked his raunchy love scenes with French actress Elsa Zylberstein, who played Annick, his girlfriend in Paris.

In real life, Zylberstein and Watson were seven years older than Christian, even though both women played his girlfriends.
Christian became good friends with Watson who enjoyed playing “mother” to his mood swings. In fact, Emily Watson was widely quoted in a number of magazines, including
Angeleno
and
Deluxe
, that she had nicknamed Christian “Tanty” for the tantrums he'd throw on set.

Although Christian had flashed his bare butt for
Prince of Jutland
, to his fans' delight,
Metroland
featured his first hot and heavy love scenes, including a flash of frontal nudity. Christian talked nonchalantly to a reporter: “It comes down to just pulling off your pants and standing there naked. Once they've seen everything, there's nothing else to worry about.”

Most actors will tell you that a movie set is the most unromantic place in the world, with bright lights, cameras, and crew milling about. However, in
Metroland
, Christian told me he had a torrid love scene that was shot across an alley in Paris, like a voyeur peeking in. Consequently, Christian and costar Elsa Zylberstein were alone in the apartment, listening to directions radioed across the alley from veteran British TV director Philip Saville, who was watching them from another apartment. In the scene, the young couple comes home and feverishly strip naked. Zylberstein then jumps into Christian's arms so that he can carry her to the bedroom.

“CUT!” Saville radioed across the alley after the end of the first take. “Christian! You've
cocked up
the scene!” The crew across the alley broke up laughing as it was Saville's polite way of telling Christian that his tummy-tapping erection was very much in view.

“There was,” Christian jokingly recalled, “a lot of spunk-taneity in that film.”

There was another love scene between him and Emily Watson where the two actors were naked in a bed, wrapped in foil to keep warm. Saville, Christian explained, sat at the foot of the bed, giving them directions. But while Saville was talking, Christian felt Saville's hand squeezing his toes. Since both actors' feet
were at the foot of the bed, Christian thought that Saville must have thought he was stroking Emily Watson's toes!

When a reporter asked Christian which character he identified with more—Chris, the married-with-child young man, or his best friend, Toni (played by Lee Ross), who remains a bachelor—he replied: “My life has been more like Toni's, in that I don't have and have never had, just in the way that I was brought up, a feeling of having to break free and get out of some place, because we never stayed anywhere long enough for me to get that feeling. I did at some point during, when I was about 12, 13, suddenly just want to be normal. I remember saying that a lot to Mum and Dad, going: ‘Why, why am I leaving and going to a different school now?'”

Metroland
also offered me a close-up experience with Christian's attitude toward his fans and publicity. When
Metroland
was released on video in the U.S., Universal Studios, the video distributor, invited Christian to a dealer show at the Los Angeles Convention Center to sign autographs for an hour.

“That sounds like fun!” I told him.

“That sounds absolutely miserable,” he replied half-asleep on the couch.

But by the day of the show, I had convinced Christian that it would be a good turn to build relations with Universal, and to shore up his growing fan base who had discovered him on video. The Blockbuster chain had been particularly supportive, I reminded him.

To my horror, when it was time to drive over to the Convention Center, I found Christian at home wearing a dirty (formerly) white T-shirt, unwashed khakis, and his favorite desert boots. The T-shirt reeked and had yellow armpit stains. His hair was greasy and he was unshaven, looking as if he had just returned from a weekend-long camping trip, sleeping and wrestling with Mojo.

“You're not going like that!” I exclaimed when I saw him.

“I am and I will. If you dress up for these silly things, you're telling them that they matter. They do not. It's my way of giving them two fingers.” He gestured. (The two-finger salute, for non-Anglophiles, is the British version of flipping the bird.)

As much as I tried, Christian would not change his mind. He was determined to show his disdain by looking like crap.

On the drive from Manhattan Beach to the Convention Center, Christian was amused by my eye-rolling every time he stretched out his arm to show off the yellow armpits. And at the Center itself, I stood behind him sniffing out an odor-safe radius from where he was seated signing autographs. Years later, seeing Christian gruff and scruffy during
The Fighter
press junket brought back a flood of memories, complete with offensive scents, and I could imagine it was his way of reluctantly campaigning for the Oscars while passively conveying contempt for the press.

The day after the Convention Center signing, I dragged Christian out to the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach to go to the GAP store. I couldn't bear to see him in those nasty old white T-shirts, so I figured he needed to have more options in his closet. He was amused as I picked out several T-shirts in different colors.

“I only wear white,” he snapped. But I cut him off and told him that the different colors would accent his eyes and complexion. Before he could complain further, he had a sky-blue shirt on and he was busy admiring himself in the mirror.

I also began to notice the cycles when Christian's hair got pretty greasy. Maybe it was the dark imprints on his pillowcases that gave it away. Maybe it was the bits of lint that stuck to his hair or that I could see (honestly) strands of Mojo's fur stuck to his head. Or maybe it was how his hair was turning black thanks to the accumulation of weeks of oil. I would wait each morning to see if he was going to wash his hair that day. How he could
bathe or shower without washing his hair was beyond me. But Christian didn't seem to mind—even when I made an acerbic comment or two about his pillowcases, which started to smell like the inside of a smokehouse.

I decided to ask David to intercede.

David, never the master of subtlety, immediately exploded in full excuse-mode for his son.

“Harrison, in England, because of poor plumbing, because of Margaret Bloody Thatcher, water is a precious resource! She and the House of Bloody Lords have ruined the English economy! It's perfectly normal to take a bath just once a week there.”

“But we're not in England, David.”

“Bloody Americans!” he roared, changing his attack without skipping a beat. “They waste more water than any other country on Earth! Water, Harrison! Water! The gift of life itself! They waste more petrol than any other country on Earth! Did you know that the world's supply of oil—”

“Yes, David, I know!” I had to cut him off, as I didn't have time for his ecological lectures or political tirades. “I just think that as a celebrity, you know, someone in the public eye, he really needs to wash his hair more often.”

David calmed instantly. “Quite right! I understand, Harrison. As always, you are right and you are thinking about Christian's well-being. That's something we appreciate in you. It's your Chinese heritage! Noble and pure of spirit. And your people do love to bathe and wash together, do you not?”

I rolled my eyes, well used to David's comments about the Chinese people. “You're thinking about the Japanese. They take communal baths.”

“Bloody Japanese!” he began.

“Yes, David. So do you want to say something to Christian about his hair?”

“You are remarkable! Quite remarkable! Always looking out
for my son! I'll talk to Christian. Rest assured that I will be discreet and subtle and tactful.”

The next day, Christian stormed up to me in the kitchen.

“Dad tells me you think my hair is dirty?”

Fantastic. “No, I was just suggesting that perhaps you should wash your hair more often.” Damn, I realized that I used the word “should.”

“Really, Harrison. Hair isn't that important. A true actor has scant interest in such superficial matters. Look at Ethan Hawke.” At that, he turned around and marched out of the room.

Acting as Christian's publicist was always a challenge. Aside from pitching story ideas to magazines, arranging the phone interview or in-person interview, I had to deal with the dreaded photo session. Christian hated being photographed. I think he just didn't respect the profession and he couldn't stand being told what to do. Since he had to deal with film directors, I couldn't understand his dislike of still photography, art directors, and everything that went into it.

For instance, editorial photo sessions typically require a meeting with the stylist and makeup artist. I had to supply Christian's measurements in advance since he refused to go in for a fitting. Of course, as he bulked up and down for different film roles, his measurements would change wildly, but in between film roles, Christian measured the following in 2002: Baleheads ready?

After
Metroland
, Christian landed another small but pivotal role in the 1998 glam rock musical
Velvet Goldmine
. Directed by Todd Haynes (who would be nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2002's
Far From Heaven
),
Velvet Goldmine
was a brash cinematic Valentine to the heady 1970s glam rock scene. Loosely based on the lives of David Bowie and Iggy Pop (the title actually comes from a David Bowie song), Christian played a reporter doing a “whatever happened to” piece on a former rock star. Coproduced by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, the cast included Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Toni Collette, and Eddie Izzard.

Producer Christine Vachon described encountering Christian and his dry humor on the set. “I approached Christian Bale to ask if I could get a ride in his car to my apartment. He had only been on set for a couple of days, so I didn't really know him, but he seemed nice enough. He didn't take kindly to my request, though. ‘My contract,' he said curtly, ‘says I get an exclusive ride to and from the set.' When I started to turn away, he said, ‘Christine, I'm kidding.'”

Aside from heavy makeup and some extended frontal nudity from the always brave Ewan McGregor,
Velvet Goldmine
ended with a gay love scene between McGregor and Christian that was literally dusted with sparkles.