Christian Bale reflects on working with Steven Spielberg as a child: “Completely fearless”
The debate surrounding child acting is never more fierce than when a former child star emerges battered and traumatised from a career in an industry they were too young to navigate. Disney-stars-turned-drug-addicts with a slew of DUI charges and a catalogue of mugshots have been all too common over the years, leading people to question the ethics surrounding young people being thrust into the limelight without proper protection from Hollywood’s sinister side.
The lack of support for and exploitation of actors like Shirley Temple and Judy Garland in the Golden Age, or Brooke Shields and Macaulay Culkin in the later years of the 20th century, demonstrates how Hollywood has often treated its young stars poorly. However, for some, they make it out unscathed, luckily avoiding the dangers of an industry that is simply not designed for kids.
Christian Bale entered Hollywood not long after he’d reached double digits, bagging the leading role in Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun when he was 13. He had started out in theatre, having learned to dance as a child, and this ultimately led him to some minor screen work, such as a part in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, a made-for-television film. It was a magic twist of fate for Bale, because while his part was small, he got to meet the movie’s leading star, Amy Irving, who happened to be married to Spielberg.
Recognising the talents in the young actor, she was the key to his big break, and Bale subsequently went on to star in Empire of the Sun to glowing reviews. It was a tough role for a young actor to play, with Bale’s character, Jim, becoming a prisoner of war while living in Shanghai, yet he pulled it off terrifically. From there, Bale starred in a range of acclaimed movies, including Newsies, Little Women, Pocahontas, and Portrait of a Lady, eventually finding worldwide success with his performance in 2000’s American Psycho.
Bale was a child actor who managed to go on to an incredibly successful adult career, but that doesn’t mean he would necessarily recommend the profession to kids. When asked by The Talks to discuss being directed in Empire of the Sun by Spielberg and whether that influenced his career, the actor replied, “He reversed that. He made me think, ‘I don’t ever want to do this again.’ Not him personally, I had a wonderful time with him. But the experience of doing it at that age is not something I’d recommend it for anybody. You’re a teenager. You should be completely anonymous. I think it’s not really great for kids to go into such an adult profession at such a young age.”
He continued, “It doesn’t matter how much you look at it as enjoyment, you’ll end up with responsibilities that you ideally shouldn’t have at that age. So that experience actually made me kind of think I did not want to be an actor. I didn’t really fully come back around until quite a few years later. I sort of dabbled, I did parts here and there but my heart wasn’t really in it for quite a long time after that.”
Regardless, Bale does look back fondly, and he believes that the reason for his success in Empire of the Sun comes down to the fact he didn’t realise at such a young age how much of a big deal Spielberg was. “At 13, what you do have is that you’re completely fearless,” he revealed in a 1998 interview. “Now, if I was told, ‘You’re gonna be the lead in a Spielberg film’, then absolutely I’d be terrified. But at that age, it was like, ‘Yeah, so?’. And you just get on with it, and I think that’s why you can get such great performances, at times, from kids.”
Bale hasn’t worked with Spielberg since, but he treasures that time in his life for teaching him a lot about the world of acting, something he has gone on to dominate with roles in movies like The Machinist, the Dark Knight trilogy, and Vice.
