“All I wanted to do was ride my BMX in the woods”: Christian Bale on his struggles with early fame
As far as diving in at the deep end of acting goes, playing the lead role in a Steven Spielberg movie was a baptism of fire for Christian Bale in what was only the youngster’s second-ever theatrical credit.
He was already well-versed in working with legends by that point, though, with Bale taking second billing behind the iconic Christopher Lee in his debut movie Mio in the Land of Faraway, while his first credit of any kind came in made-for-television film Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna.
The latter boasted Olivia de Havilland, Rex Harrison, and Omar Sharif among its ensemble, so in what eventually became the habit of a career, Bale was already surrounded by greatness from the very beginning. Many child actors struggle to deal with the pressures of fame regardless of whether or not they make it as adults, and Bale was very much among that number.
When Empire of the Sun was released in December 1987, he was only 13 years old and wholly unprepared for the increase in recognition that would inevitably come with giving such an assured performance in a multi-time Academy Award-nominated literary adaptation helmed by the single most famous director in the business.
At the time, he was still juggling his acting commitments with his education, but as he discovered in a post-Spielberg world, he’d suddenly become a marked man for very different reasons. Somewhere between a local celebrity and an easy target, Bale admitted that as much as he gained from the experience, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
“I enjoyed making the film, but I was shocked when I received all the attention when I got home to Bournemouth,” he said. “Girls were all over me, boys wanted to fight me, and I was being asked to open local fêtes when all I wanted to do was ride my BMX bike in the woods. I told my parents I wasn’t interested in doing anything again because the attention ruined it.”
His planned retirement in his teens didn’t quite go according to plan, with Bale’s next movie coming in Kenneth Branagh’s star-studded Shakespearean drama Henry V, although it did mark his final film for three years. If anything, the Spielbergian experience created a false impression of what cinema was supposed to be, with the future Oscar winner sharing that smaller-scale projects took a little getting used to.
“I had no idea just how unique that experience was at the time because I didn’t realize that every film didn’t build a bloody runway the planes could land on in the middle of a marshland in Spain, or build a pagoda, or build, you know, huge hospitals, to build literally half a full-size stadium out there,” he told GQ. “I didn’t realise every film didn’t travel to China and have, you know, 10,000 extras. It wasn’t until later when I was on much smaller films, I went, ‘Oh yeah, oh, that was a big one.'”
Not only did it skew his perception of the industry, but it robbed him of many staple childhood pleasures, too. Obviously, it goes without saying that he recovered from his initial disillusionment in some style, with Bale now celebrated as one of the best in the business.
