Christian Bale (32 page)

So he began looking around for scripts that would excite him, rather than movies that would simply be money makers. As Edward Jay Epstein says in his book,
The Hollywood Economist
, “Movie stars come in two flavors: $20 million and free.”

And now he could have his pick. With the success of
Batman
, Hollywood finally opened its doors wide to Christian. Before he would have been up against a whole host of other young Hollywood stars vying for the same role but now he could practically pick and choose whatever he wanted to do.

In the end, he made six films in the two years between the two
Batman
movies. Fresh off the set of
Batman Begins
, Christian undertook the role of John Rolfe in the Terence Malick movie
The New World
, a drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the seventeenth century.

However, Christian was not the lead. The lead part went to Colin Farrell, who played Captain John Smith, while Hollywood veteran Christopher Plummer was cast as Captain Newport. Newcomer Q'orianka Kilcher was Native American beauty Pocahontas, who saves Captain Smith from execution.

The movie was another flop for Christian. With a budget of $30 million, the film failed to make back even half of that figure during its theatrical release, taking in just $12.7 million worldwide.

But once again he got glowing reviews for the role, with
Rolling Stone
magazine stating: “Farrell's laddie-boy vigor sometimes feels at odds with the delicacy of the material. Christian Bale is far more persuasively in thrall as tobacco farmer John Rolfe, the
widower who marries Pocahontas and sweeps her off to London when Smith deserts her.”

By the time the movie was released in December 2005, Christian had already filmed his next two movies,
Harsh Times
and
Rescue Dawn
.

Harsh Times
was a tough drama about two friends living in South Central Los Angeles and the violence that comes between them. A small indie film with a budget of just $2 million, it was a movie Christian had wanted to do since 2001, and thanks to
Batman
the studio was happy to cast him.

He revealed in an interview: “I wanted to do something that wasn't a big juggernaut of a movie and this was one that I'd wanted to do for a few years. I'd met Dave [director David Ayers]—I can't remember exactly when but it might have been as early as 2001 and we met at a bar and ended up being there something like five hours arguing about things. He's an engaging guy, he doesn't mince his words and I just loved the character, the momentum of the whole thing. At the time it was a studio piece and nobody wanted me to do it but with
Batman
, I thought, maybe now they'll cast me.”

The movie was a modest success, earning $3.5 million—only $1.5 million more than its budget but still a profit, which is always good news for the studio.

Just three months after filming
Harsh Times
on the streets of L.A., Christian was in the jungles of Thailand for his next movie,
Rescue Dawn
. This time Christian was the lead as Lieutenant Dieter Dengler in a fictionalized account of his bravery and comradeship in the early days of the Vietnam War. Lt. Dengler's plane was shot down over Laos and he was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese.

The film was being directed by Werner Herzog, a director with a reputation for recklessly endangering actors during filming; however, the German director spoke out in 2007 to claim:
“Contrary to the rumors that are going around, I'm very professional, very safety orientated.”

Rescue Dawn's
producer, Harry Knapp, told
Salon.com
that Christian had scolded Herzog about a safety issue with a helicopter, telling him: “I'm not going to fucking die here!”

Christian also rebuked Herzog when he broke with director's tradition, yelling “stop” instead of “cut” to end a take. Recalled Knapp: “Out of nowhere, Herzog starts calling ‘stop' to end a take instead of ‘cut' and it set Christian off. He said: ‘Look we don't know what stop is and we won't stop if you say stop . . . say cut.' Very next take Werner yells: ‘STOP.' Christian now vomiting says: ‘If you say stop one more time I'm done for the day.'”

Despite the friction, Christian really was delighted to be working with Herzog and admitted he took the role because: “I like going to hell and back!” He added: “I knew that Werner would be a good guy to take us there. How many times in life do you get to do this crazy shit? It's something that I was going to take advantage of. That was the big appeal to me for doing it. I like that, just testing yourself and seeing how far you can go. Even though the finished movie is not real life, when you are actually swimming in the snake infested rivers, you're not
acting
swimming in snake infested rivers. You are swimming in snake infested rivers! When you are wrestling with a snake, it's not a pretend snake. You are wrestling with a wild snake. The snake was not venomous but he had some pretty good fangs on him and I got them in the shoulder. So to me that's real life. That is what has become my real life. I really did do that.”

Christian also ate maggots for the role and lost weight as the character Lt. Dengler was kept and tortured in a POW concentration camp. Recalled Christian in an interview with
Movies Online
, “Oh, yeah, those were real maggots. They were very real. I didn't mind eating the maggots, but I just wanted to make sure about where the maggots had come from. Where did they find
those maggots?” This time, however, he didn't go to the extremes he did for
The Machinist
. He said: “I really actually didn't lose a whole lot of weight for this one. I was thin but there's a lot of good makeup and I just wanted enough to give kind of an indication of time and everything for it but it really wasn't anything on the scale of
The Machinist
. I wouldn't do that again. I've kind of conquered that in my mind and don't need to prove that to myself again.”

Rescue Dawn
ended up grossing $5.5 million in the U.S., well short of its estimated $10 million budget, but reviews were generally favorable.

With
Rescue Dawn
winding up filming in November 2005, Christian just had enough time to pack on a few pounds and begin rehearsing for his next project,
The Prestige
. The movie would reunite him with
Batman
director Christopher Nolan. With a budget of $40 million—the total of Christian's last three movies combined—the movie was based on the novel by Christopher Priest. It follows a rivalry between two magicians—Christian and Hugh Jackman—which intensifies when one of them performs the ultimate illusion.

Yet when he was first given the script by Nolan during the filming of
Batman
, he didn't bother even reading it since Nolan was already auditioning other actors for the part. He revealed in an interview: “I didn't actually read it during
Batman
. I had spoken with Chris about it before we started shooting
Batman
but just a casual conversation. Nothing to do with me doing it, whatsoever. He was talking to other actors at the time. But then we worked very well. I read
The Prestige
again after I finished
Batman
and I wasn't sure if Chris just wanted to keep me as Bruce Wayne in his eyes and that was it and he wouldn't want to work on anything else. So I contacted him and raised that
question. I really liked the character of Borden and just told him: ‘Hey, look, this would be great, I could really do this very well.' And he believed me, so we got crackin'.”

Christian threw himself in the role, delighted to be working with Nolan again but also eager to learn some magic tricks from pros Ricky Jay and Michael Weber. He was especially excited to learn because of his grandfather's interest in magic.

Christian told a reporter: “My grandfather was a magician. I never saw him perform or anything but he always remembers the Magic Circle in London. By the time I kind of knew that, he had a few old tricks in a chest up in the attic and he would pull it down now and then but most of them were busted so he'd describe how they were done. But certainly, he very much enjoyed that.”

But Christian admitted his own attempts at magic were not great and often he would fail in front of dozens of extras during a scene. He added: “There were an awful lot of disastrous attempts at magic that ended very badly but to be honest those were just as enjoyable as when you succeeded and nailed it. It's kind of nice to be making a fool of yourself in front of hundreds of extras who are all there snickering when you get it wrong.”

Despite Christian's terrible attempts to perform tricks, the magic formula of Nolan and Christian was a winner again with a well-reviewed movie grossing almost $100 million.

Once again the pair had made a profitable movie, making the studios sit up and take note, especially Warner Bros., who agreed to increase the budget on the upcoming
Dark Knight. Batman Begins
had cost $150 million to make but now the studio was happy to let Nolan have another $35 million, pushing the budget on the sequel up to $185 million. While that seems an extraordinary amount, most blockbuster movies cost in the region of $200 to $300 million.

But before Christian could don the Batsuit once more he had two more movie projects to complete. The first one was a
small part in the indie film
I'm Not There
. With a budget of just $730,000, Todd Haynes, who had directed Christian in
Velvet Goldmine
, filmed the movie in less than a month with such stars as Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian, and his future
Dark Knight
costar Heath Ledger, all embodying different aspects of musician Bob Dylan's life.

For Christian it meant he could retain his indie cred while still pumping out the big blockbusters, although his next movie,
3:10 to Yuma
, fell somewhere in between.

A remake of the 1957 movie of the same name, the film sees Christian in the role of Dan Evans, a small-time rancher who agrees to hold captured outlaw Ben Wades, who's awaiting a train to go to court in Yuma. Wade is played by former Hollywood bad boy Russell Crowe, and the two got along great while filming in the desert of New Mexico.

Crowe told a reporter: “Right from the first time we did a reading I could see that he had a sense of humor and was very balanced about what the job was all that sort of stuff. Once you've worn that cape it must be hard keeping your feet on the ground! You can tell there's a lot of base jealously from me about the fact he gets to wear the cape! But we found it really easy to get on. It's really nice to have a repartee when you're trying to do complicated things in rough conditions. It's also a good thing being able to simply finish a day's work and being able to have a regular conversation with a bloke over a beer without it being some big to do and breaking some sort of contemporary taboo like: ‘We don't do that in Los Angeles.'”

Christian also revealed that people thought he was mad to work with Crowe, who once had a reputation as a hard-drinking troublemaker. In 1999, Crowe was involved in a scuffle at the Plantation Hotel in Coffs Harbour, Australia, that was caught on security camera. Two men were later acquitted of using the video in an attempt to blackmail him.

In 2002 Crowe got into an argument with TV producer Malcolm Gerrie when part of his appearance at the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards was cut to fit the BBC's tape-delayed broadcast. The Aussie actor let rip with a barrage of four-letter words. Though he later apologized, saying: “What I said to him may have been a little more passionate, now in the cold light of day, than I would have liked it to have been.”

And in June 2005, Crowe was arrested and charged with second degree assault by New York City Police after he threw a telephone at the Mercer Hotel employee who refused to help him place a phone call when the system did not work from his room. After being charged with fourth degree criminal possession of a weapon, the telephone, Crowe was sentenced to conditional release and later paid $100,000 to settle a civil lawsuit out of court with the employee, who received treatment for facial lacerations. Crowe later said: “This was possibly the most shameful incident that I've gotten myself in and I've done some pretty dumb things in my life.”

So it was easy to see why those around Christian were concerned that he was going to be working with Crowe.

Christian told a reporter: “We had never met before. Whenever people asked me what I was doing next and I said that I was going to be working with Russell, they would kind of look at me and go: ‘Oh right, you're going to be in for a tough ride with him.' You find an awful lot and I don't mean to talk out of school but a lot of actors sort of complain and wince and do everything to avoid actually getting on with the work, so it's nice when you're
working with someone like Russell when you can just get to the point and you can have blunt conversations about the scenes and it just makes it easy. Obviously he doesn't have to be told what to do because he's a bloody good actor and it's a pleasure to work with someone as good as that.”

Crowe has cleaned up his act and stayed out of trouble since the phone-throwing incident, but soon Hollywood—and the rest of the world—would be looking on stunned as his costar Christian would be the one hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.