High profile is something that Christian Bale definitely is not. He is managed quietly by his father, an ex-pilot with scant Hollywood connections. He has no publicist, avoids interviews like the plague, and has never been the focus of a major American magazine article. And while these elements make him something of an anomaly in the movie business, his “in-the-biz-not-of-it” stance is also the key to his extraordinary popularity, which is based on his performances rather than his demographic.

His fans are an impassioned, vocal bunch who flood their idol with mail, particularly E-mail, sometimes at the rate of several hundred a day. He was more than a bit shocked when America Online informed him of his rank as the third most popular subject of conversation in its “Hollywood Online, Talk about Actors” forum, just behind Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves, and way ahead of more visible figures like Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chris O’Donnell. He has large, active fan clubs in such unlikely places as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Universities And Bale’s official, Toronto-based fan club raised thousands of dollars for charity last June in an online auction of items he wore or used while making the bizarrely popular film Newsies. Not bad for one still paying his dues.

A tall, lanky, big-boned 22-year-old with a broad, childlike face, sensual lips, and prematurely wise eyes, Christian is unconventionally handsome. Apart from the odd burst of hesitant laughter, he maintains an impassive, thoughtful expression, occasionally bending his mouth slightly to accomodate a mildly bemused smile. So why the excitement over someone so low- key? The answer lies in the strange trajectory of his now 12-year career, and in the fanaticism that seems naturally to accrue to actors whose unusual talent makes them popular and beloved long before they become conventionally famous.

In Spielberg’s 1987 film Empire of the Sun, based on J.G. Ballard’s autobiographical account of his experience as an adolescent prisoner of war, Christian began his film career with a spectacular, award-winning performance in the leading role. Remarkably, the 13-year-old Bale won the part despite his film inexperience and lack of formal training. The merits of his do-it- yourself method became especially evident in last year’s Little Women, in which he costarred with Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, and Claire Danes. With his natural charm and mysteriously accented emotions, he stole every scene he was in, and his performance is generally considered to be one of the keys to this small, thoughtful film’s surprising success. While his experiences between those two films included some box-office failures (chiefly Swing Kids, and Disney’s failed attempt to re-popularize musicals, Newsies), Christian’s realness and non-pretention shines through what would be considered to be his weaker roles. He has never given less than a solid and touching performance, and has never gotten a bad review.

In the wake of Little Women, and, more recently, Disney’s Pocahontas, in which he did the voice for the character Thomas, not to mention the phenomenal success of Newsies in video, things are happening very fast for the young Welshman. He’s just completed work on two high profile films, Christopher Hampton’s The Secret Agent, in which he costars with Bob Hoskins, Patricia Arquette, Robin Williams, and Gerard Depardieu, and Jane Campion’s much anticipated The Portrait of a Lady, wherein he appears with Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Shelley Duvall, Viggo Mortenson, and Barbara Hershey. With directors like James Cameron and Paul Shrader actively seeking him out, and several important projects in the works, Christian is suddenly a hot property, whether he likes it or not.

Perhaps because we have recently become friends, Christian rather reluctantly agreed to give us what constitutes the first - and if he has his way, last - in-depth interview of his career. Having just returned to London after two months on location in Italy for The Portrait of A Lady, we finally got hold of a very knackered if game Christian for a lengthy 2 AM chat.

JOEL WESTENDORF: So are you up to answering a few questions?

CHRISTIAN BALE: Yeah. (Chuckle)

DENNIS COOPER: Describe The Secret Agent.

CB: It’s set in the 1890's in Soho in London in an earlier porn shop, which is very tame by our standards. In fact, we had to do two versions. One for the cinema, and one for television. One where they scan the racks and there’s loads of dildos. Then they scrape all the dildos off and do it again for TV.

DC: With Troll Dolls instead.

CB: (Laughs) Exactly. No, that’s even more indecent, isn’t it? So, Joseph Conrad’s novel was one of the first thrillers in the style that we know them today. I heard that it inspired people like Graham Greene and John LeCarre. It’s a lot of characters, all up to no good, basically. And they all end up dead. That’s the short of it.

JW: Give me an idea of your character, Stevie.

CB: He’s “innocence”, basically. He’s like 19 or something, with a mental age of 7 or 8. So, he’s in his own little world, and he’s fascinated with trying to solve the wrongs of what is going on in the world. And he has the advantage of his lack of perception, really, he can see things as either purely good or purely bad. Whereas all the others have become quite mixed up, especially with Bob Hoskin’s character, who just doesn’t seem to have a grasp of good or bad at all. So you’ve got this complete innocent trying to live in this world, and he just can’t.

JW: What are the other characters like?

CB: Well, there’s Winnie, who is Patricia Arquette. In the film she’s my sister, my mother - she’s everything. Nobody else takes care of me. My mother, played by Elizabeth Spriggs, has gone a bit batty and isn’t in any state to look after a handicapped kid. So Winnie is sort of his whole world. She’s the only one he can talk to. Verloc, who is the secret agent, is Bob Hoskins. Because Winnie is married to him, without thinking too much about it, Stevie believes that Verloc is a good man. It’s one of the lines in the film that I always say: “Good man, Mr. Verloc.”

JW: What’s Bob Hoskins like?

CB: It was funny with Bob. My character is so submissive when he’s around, and treats him with such awe and respect - not to say I don’t have that for Bob at all, I’ve got an awful lot of respect for him - that I couldn’t just sit there talking with Bob. When Patricia, Bob, and I met out in Los Angeles for the first time we had lunch and had a few drinks, and got a bit drunk and everything. And I really couldn’t see us doing that again once I had started playing my character. It would have felt a bit odd.

JW: How about Patricia Arquette?

CB: I sort of felt most comfortable with Patricia. She is the only one that Stevie really chats with. She sort of adopted the sister attitude with me, and beat the shit out of me as soon as they shouted cut, doing Kung Fu kicks on me and shit, you know, in period costume.

DC: You told us a funny story about something that happened on the set with a bomb?

CB: We were on Greenwich Hill in London, by the Observatory. I was doing a scene where a bomb went off in my face. It was a public place, and we cleared everybody out because they could get hurt. Now, I didn’t actually see him, but there was this guy who was hiding in the bushes taking a piss when the bomb went off. And he came running out of the bushes afterwards, I don’t know in what state of undress.

DC: How did you get on with Gerard Depardieu?

CB: The first time I met him I was asleep in my dressing room, and I woke up because there was such a loud belch, and I sat up and there he was in his shorts, sort of scratching himself. And he said to me, (adopting French accent) “It’s OK? I can come in?” And he came in and we had a chat for ten minutes, and he was off again. We didn’t talk much during the filming. Mostly leering at each other. He’d come up and go, (makes blubbery noise with his lips) “Christian!” And I’d go (same noise) “Gerard!” That was the extent of it, really.

DC: You’ve had no formal acting training, right?

CB: That is true! I did a couple of workshops when I was like 12, but I’ve been able to work so I just haven’t needed to. I thought about going to drama school for a bit. I just started to think, HMM, this seems to be happening a bit easy. I was in Kenneth Branagh’s film Henry V when I was 14, and Kenneth’s mentor is Hugh Cruttwell, the ex-head of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. So I spoke with him about it, and he said, “Wait until you’re older, because a lot of people, they go along, they don’t really have any of their own ideas, and so they come out being identical to each other.” When I did Newsies I spoke with Robert Duvall about it as well, and he said essentially the same thing. So that basically decided me.

DC: Your grandfather acted and did stuntwork.

CB: Yeah, both of my granddads. You’re talking about the one on my dad’s side. He was John Wayne’s double for a while.

DC: Did you know him as a kid?

CB: Not at all. I went to South Africa at the end of ‘92 to meet him. He had cancer, and he was basically hanging on to meet us. So only that once.

DC: Was his being an actor an inspiration to you?

CB: Well, he wasn’t exactly an actor. His brother was. All of them on my dad’s side are enormous. They’re like 6'4", 6'6", and built like brick shithouses. So my dad’s uncle Rex, who I met, though I don’t remember it because I was so young, was an actor. I think he tended to play heavies all the time because he was so big.

JW: When you did Empire of the Sun , were you aware of how big a deal it was to have a lead in a Spielberg movie?

CB: When you’re 13... It’s not as if I was running around banging on doors at that age. I didn’t really care much if I got the parts or not. Just sort of coincidences had happened and I was lucky. So I didn’t have an idea of the whole “big picture” of it. Now, when I’ve decided that I do like acting, and I’d like to continue doing it, you start to get slightly more self- conscious, and realize what on earth you’re doing. But when you’re just doing what’s in front of you, you don’t think of that, you know?

DC: It was such a dream role, and involved such a range of emotions. Did it spoil you?

CB: It did spoil me. I remember people saying that no matter how much work I did later, this was one of the best roles I’d ever have. And that you hardly ever get any roles like that one coming along. But I’ve really enjoyed doing whatever, small parts, it didn’t matter. You can’t keep on competing with yourself all the time. It’s going to get a bit boring. After Empire of the Sun I didn’t work for almost two years. I’d be getting a bit worried now if I did that.

DC: Now that we’re back in this period of your life, tell us about your date with Drew Barrymore.

CB: (Laughs) Well, I was 13, and I’d just done Empire of the Sun, and I was a young, impressionable lad. She was quite a well-developed girl, and I was standing playing the arcade at Amblin, and suddenly this voluptuous figure arrived beside me, and I thought, Bing! I was quite stunned, and she asked if I wanted to go see a film, so I did. We went to see some bloody awful horror film, and that was the end of it. She never called again.

DC: Did you know her from E.T.?

CB: Yes. But she was quite a different girl.

DC: Yeah, she went through some changes.

Christian Bale
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