Under the skin of actor Christian Bale, who combines versatility with a permanent drive for perfectionism.
Christian Bale is the cool, calm, understated and effortlessly edgy actor famous for his roles in everything from American Psycho to Terminator: Salvation, Vice to The Machinist.
He sways between bloated bureaucrat and paper-thin introvert, between deranged narcissist and supercharged superhero; yet through it all, he carries with him a brand of perfectionism that permeates every project and every script, and an intensity, both on and off screen.
“Being a perfectionist does come across to me as a battle, but it’s a battle I want to invest in; and it’s one I don’t want to conquer,” he begins. “Sometimes the conflict is the thing that keeps you going in life, and that’s definitely the case with me.”
Already three decades into a brilliant career, which has taken him from the very simple surrounds of Haverfordwest, Wales, through and beyond LA and the global film market, he now occupies an iconic place where art and culture collide. He sits in a space where you doubt he could ever make a bad movie again.
“I’m not sure about that,” he cuts back, returning to the subject of the standards he sets himself. “Ultimately, I believe my own battle with perfectionism is something that will play itself out over the years to come. I’m not completely constricted by it, nor do I think I have conquered it, so I guess I must be somewhere in the middle.”
While he approaches his interviews as he does his film-making – with a sense of solemn seriousness – there is always humour lurking just below the surface.
“I’ve always felt that acting is a funny way for a grown man to make a living,” Bale says. “It was never something I dreamt about doing when I was younger. I didn’t go through school thinking I wanted to become an actor.”
He continues: “There were moments where I took an acting job just as a way of doing something that helped my family, and it was a situation where it was my responsibility to keep working or I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t carry on.
“It’s fair to say I’ve started to get more satisfaction out of it now but I’m always going to be a realist, and I think we’re all just trying to do our own thing – we’re all trying to survive,” he says.
Diversity has always been a big part of Bale’s make-up – even his reacquaintance with the superhero genre sees the 48-year-old taking invention forward, as
Gorr the God Butcher in 2022’s Thor: Love and Thunder.
“It doesn’t matter to me what the genre is, what the subject matter is, who the character is or what the era is. What I love about a great story is a sense of fatalism – that’s usually what draws me to a project.
“It gives me a drive and focus because I know there is a destructive, uncomfortable endgame.
“Ultimately, once you are on that track to what is usually a sense of implosion, it opens up a pathway to what I consider my best work.
“Perhaps the most intense project I’ve done was Ford vs Ferrari, which will surprise some people, but I loved that because the absorption, the darkness, was right up there with almost anything else I’ve done.”
Whether Bale’s voyage back into CGI turns out to be as profitable as his portrayals of Bruce Wayne, or as artistically satisfying as Patrick Bateman, remains to be seen, but the notion of success is one that Bale has his own definition for anyway.
“Success is relative. Success in the movie world isn’t necessarily success in life. Success comes about when you choose the things that make you and those around you happy – it’s being confident enough to forge your own path.”
