Christian Bale received death threats when making ‘American Psycho’
Christian Bale was never one to cut corners on a job. Throughout every one of his films, Bale has been known to drastically transform his body to suit whatever role he’s playing, whether that’s the stick figure frame of Trevor in The Machinist or the raw physique of Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight trilogy. Bale might have pushed hard to go the extra mile, but one of his first classic films also got a severe amount of pushback.
When casting the role of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Bale wasn’t initially in consideration, with the part first being offered to Leonardo DiCaprio. Even though he was told he wouldn’t be involved, Bale refused to take no for an answer, proceeding to prepare for the role regardless of what they told him.
Bale even mentioned that people in his immediate circle thought that he had gone mad, telling GQ, “I would call Mary [Harron] up, and she would say ‘Christian, they’ve given it to other people,’ and I was like ‘it doesn’t matter, we’re still gonna make it.’ And she was like, ‘Ooh, he’s lost the plot.’ I was turning down other projects and kept on going, and it eventually came back, so that felt like a great victory”.
Despite the studio’s cold feet, Bale’s performance in the role was truly unnerving, bringing the perfect balance of a snobby Wall Street worker with a murderous psychopath. After the movie was screened, Bale also mentioned that some people weren’t the biggest fan of his portrayal.
The biggest occasion that stuck out to Bale was when someone warned him not to go down a back alley because he might get attacked, continuing, “They called me up, and they went, ‘There’s some person, and they know where you walk every single day, and you go down this back alley, and they say that they’re gonna jump on you and they’re gonna rip your cerebral cortex out of your head. So please don’t go down that alley.’ So, of course, I was like, ‘I’m going to that alley. I want to see what happens.’ Fortunately enough, I kept walking up and down it going, ‘Where are they? Come on.”
As much as Bale may have loved the reception that the film eventually got, there were a few instances where some people didn’t get the film’s joke. Despite being a dark comedy, the actor remembered having meetings with honest Wall Street workers and them thinking the comedic angle was genuine, saying, “I went and visited all different levels of people at Wall Street. When I got there, they were like, ‘Patrick Bateman, we love ’em’. I was like, ‘Yeah, ironically, right?’, and they went, ‘What do you mean?’, so it was always worrying even back then”.
Throughout the entire film, though, Bale’s insane portrait of this man slowly losing his mind is meant to be played off for laughs, from his wooden demeanour every time he tries to speak like a normal person to violently assaulting Jared Leto’s Paul Allen to the tune of Huey Lewis’ ‘Hip To Be Square’. It might have flown over some people’s heads and pushed Bale to the brink of sanity, but his determination to keep moving forward has stayed with him ever since.
