Christian Bale and Tom Cruise: A Surprising Connection
Introduction
Christian Bale has staked his claim to being one of the best actors of the current era, if not of all time. He is the only actor who has carried on Paul Muni’s and Daniel Day-Lewis’s legacy by being a true mimic in real life. He can take on any shape with one of the most unique metabolisms in human history, from the skinny racer body of Ken Miles in Ford vs. Ferrari to the bubble gut-bald combo of Dick Cheney in Vice. Few actors have been as free to tap into what’s inside them as he has been. He used his metabolism to get into the best shape of his life to play Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, the role that made him a star and an actor everyone would notice. Not only was his performance surprising because of his chiseled Adonis body and empty, marketed voice but also because of the behavior tic he took from a source that wasn’t all that surprising and used to help him figure out who Bateman was.
Who Is Patrick Bateman?
At the movie’s beginning, Bateman says that people have an idea of who he is, but he is just not there. Many people have tried to argue that this is meant to be read on a higher level as a look into a once-good man who has been completely taken over by capitalism, but the truth is that it’s probably much more literal than anyone thought. In conversations, both the author of the original book, Bret Easton Ellis, and the co-writer and director of the movie, Mary Harron, say that the book and the movie could only really work as a dark satirical comedy that pokes fun at the fragility of the male ego in an ultra-capitalist society. With this in mind, it makes more sense to think of Patrick Bateman less as a human with typical goals and more as an alien trying to act like a human but failing. When Bateman tries to do “normal” things like talk about important things to think about in the world today or talk about why he loves his favorite music records, his voice slips into the default state of an “as seen on TV” sales rep reading from a teleprompter. So, with all of that in mind, when Christian Bale took on this role, he knew he was playing a humanoid creature that could only pretend to be human. Who did he look to for ideas? Tom Cruise.
How Did Tom Cruise Inspire Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman?
Yes, Tom Cruise. The hero who defied death and saved movies. In an interview with blackbookmag.com in 2009, Mary Harron said that Christian Bale once called her and told her he had a “light bulb moment.” Bale found Tom Cruise’s interview on the David Letterman show while trying to figure out how “Martian-like” Bateman was and how he “watched what people did and tried to figure out the right way to act.” Bale noticed Cruise “had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was taken with this energy.” She didn’t say much more than this, but it’s still a treasure trove. Cruise has earned a lot of respect over the years. He is always talked about as a very skilled and adaptable actor and one of the nicest, most interesting people you could ever meet. But that image has always been backed up by the fact that he seems… well, let’s say “strange.” It’s too easy to blame everything on the couch-jumping incident and his “I am the last true movie star, and I will fight for that title until my dying breath” attitude. It’s scary how he throws himself into everything he does with too much energy. Remember when someone sprayed water in his face at a War of the Worlds red carpet event and he asked the joker over and over again, “Why did you do that?” while smiling as big as he could? Or how eager he is for us to see him jump off the top of a mountain or hang from a plane in the air? Yes, it is a bit… odd.
