Worth The Weight

It’s not often one gets to say to an actor, “Congratulations. You look like shit in that movie.” Nor, indeed, would it be often that they smile and say “Thanks very much” by way of response. In the case of Christian Bale, however, such an exchange is entirely unavoidable.

For his role in The Machinist, an eerie psyche-out of the same left-field pedigree as Memento, the thirty-one year old dropped sixty pounds. A svelte chap at the best of times, it was weight he could ill-afford to lose, but months spent on the Calista Flockhart plan make his portrayal of paranoid insomniac Trevor Reznik that bit more haunting.
So, how did it feel being half – or rather two-thirds – the man he used to be?
“There was no way around it really,” explained the Welsh born actor. “Trevor is just spiralling downward in every sense – mentally, emotionally, physically. When I read the script, I thought of him as a man on the brink of death, and it was a way into the character. I was really taken with the script and I kept having dreams about it, and I had this image of Trevor looking like Hank Williams getting released from jail a few months before he died. It just transpired that I was better at losing weight than I imagined, and ended up weighing 120 pounds. I kept going. I wouldn’t do it again though.”
Didn’t he ever think, ‘fuck this, fit me up for a corset’?
“Well, lots of people kept saying, ‘what about CGI’? But I enjoyed the challenge. I actually got into it, just living on bits of apple and coffee. It’s amazing, but there’s a couple of scenes where I have to eat and I couldn’t swallow, because even a couple of morsels can cause your face to expand when you’re that gaunt. And it was ultimately a nice place to be mentally. You just become completely calm because you can’t afford to expend energy. It was like a zen thing, except very self-destructive. The worst part was running into people. You obviously don’t call up everyone you know to tell them you’ll be losing 68 pounds for a role, so you bump into people on the street and they think you’ve developed a chronic drug habit or something.”
Christian’s weird dalliance with method acting didn’t stop there. This surreal existential thriller hangs on his paradoxical performance as a man who sits around reading Dostoyevsky and Kafka, yet elects to do the dullest job imaginable. Already a rather clever chap (the stepson of Gloria Steinem no less), Christian had no need to brush up on literature, but he did seek out a grotty machine shop over the course of his research.
“It was hard finding a place that wasn’t completely computerised. But it was interesting. Well, in a very monotonous, depressing way. I got to hear all these stories of horrible industrial accidents. There was a giant pressing machine that a guy just threw himself into one day. I was glad I wasn’t eating anymore when they told me about it.”
Well, easy come, easy go. As soon as shooting wrapped on The Machinist, Christian was back stuffing his face and buffing up for Batman Begins, the latest Christopher Nolan-directed instalment in the franchise, due to hit our screens this June.
“That was much worse than starvation – willing myself to go to the gym, but it was fine. It was really intensive and I always work better when I have a deadline.”
While The Machinist is thoroughly in keeping with Christian’s role choices to date, Batman Begins seems rather conventional in a CV that includes American Psycho, Velvet Goldmine and Equilibrium. It’s often been noted that Mr. Bale shied away from bigger roles after his commanding youthful turn in Spielberg’s Empire Of The Sun brought him an early, and allegedly terrifying brush with fame. Does donning a black cape imply that he’s over it?
“Well, it was terrifying when I was younger. I couldn’t ride my bike anywhere or do anything without people pointing. But I’ve never consciously avoided any kind of roles. I just went for scripts I love. I probably wouldn’t have been as interested in Batman though, if it weren’t for Chris Nolan, because I knew he’d be doing something completely different with it.”
Happily, The Machinist and Batman Begins seem to have rescued Christian from career related depression. “Before I got the script for The Machinist, I had spent weeks staring at the wall of my new house and wondering how I was going to pay for it. I wasn’t in demand and I was disappointed with some of the work I’d done and the choices I’d made. Then suddenly my arse was saved.”
It’s rather mind-blowing to think of poor Christian worrying about the bills. He has such a fantastically glamorous background – his mother was a circus dancer, his father a pilot, his grandfather a stand-in for John Wayne. Even Christian’s wife, Sibi Blazic, was once Winona Ryder’s personal assistant.
“How on earth did you know that?” he laughs.
Er, it’s on your website.
“On my God. I have to go read that. I might find out all kinds of interesting things about myself.”
No doubt.

The Machinist is released March 18th.