Bale can fill the sensible shoes of a wallflower, like the one in or the charming (1997), as easily as he can don the cape of the Dark Knight. In fact, such is the degree to which Bale disappears into a role that one could watch his entire filmography, as I have not quite done, and still not be able to peg him the way one could peg Brando as primal, McQueen as cool, Nicholson as uncanny, Clooney as classic, Depp as daring and Pitt as, well, Pitt. At 33, he may be the biggest movie actor on the planet who isn’t a celebrity.
When he walks into a room, as he does on a sunny, late-spring morning at Shutters by the Beach in Santa Monica, heads don’t turn. There’s something enigmatic about this Christian Bale, something indefinable that serves him in his craft, a craftiness that springs from not being crafty at all. He’s done about three dozen movies, and he’s utterly lacking a persona, other than the one that makes women — and by women I don’t just mean my wife — swoon at the mere mention of his name.
Despite his vast and varied career, Bale remains a bit of a cult figure. Those who know have known for a long, long time. Those who don’t may never.
The great Werner Herzog — and whatever you may think of , let us not argue the greatness of the man who hauled a 340-ton steamship through the Peruvian jungle and over mountains to make and who has made more than 50 films, some in the most remote and extreme conditions imaginable, and for the money that falls into the cushions of most Hollywood moguls’ couches .
News RSS