The movie star Christian Bale could never be: “I don’t believe in myself enough to do that”
By all metrics, Christian Bale is a movie star. He’s fronted some truly huge films, including Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy and Terminator Salvation, in which he played John Connor. Critically, he is beloved. He’s won an Oscar for The Fighter and picked up two Golden Globes, one for the previous endeavour, and the other for his unhinged portrayal of Dick Cheney in Vice.
The well-known chameleon has found fortune, fame, and everything else you could possibly want from a career in showbusiness. It’s been a bumpy road, with plenty of moments where it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, but through determination and talent, he found a way through. That doesn’t stop him from having the odd moment of impostor syndrome, however.
In an interview with Esquire, the star of The Prestige explained that the acting business wasn’t about self-promotion at all. “It’s actually saying, ‘I don’t stand a chance being myself. I’ve gotta create somebody else in order to communicate. If I remove myself from all of my own memories and inhibitions and create another character – holy shit! I can reach out and communicate in that way,’” he said. “To me, it’s actually about trying to fucking destroy the self, and then you might be able to hit something. There’s some quote, I think it’s Oscar Wilde, ‘An artist puts nothing of himself into his art.’”
This isn’t the case for all actors, however. Not according to Bale anyway. “You wanna fucking be Steve McQueen,” he continued. “What cooler fucking guy in the world than that? I can’t do that. I don’t believe in myself enough to do that. I’ve always thought, if I was in a band, I’d never want to be the lead singer.” He did eventually compromise on this point, saying that he would want to be at least the ‘lead guitarist’ in this fictional set-up.
The Welshman is, of course, referring to Steve McQueen, the actor, rather than the identically named artist-turned-director. The American star was the king of cool in the 1950s and 1960s, with his rugged good looks, ice-cold delivery, and real-life habit of racing cars very, very fast. Through movies like Bullit, The Great Escape, and The Towering Inferno, he became one of the most famous and desirable people in the world, drawing millions of dollars in box office receipts as a result. This success naturally resulted in a pretty big ego, which wasn’t always the most useful thing to have on set, but some would say that, when you’re that good, you can behave how you want.
This brazen, self-centred approach to celebrity is almost the antithesis of how Bale conducts himself. He is fiercely private, having revealed very little about his personal life. According to him, this helps him disappear into his roles; the less the audience knows about him, the more they can believe he is someone else. They might have made similar box office numbers at their respective peaks, but don’t ever equate these two icons of the screen in any other way.
Bale’s admiration for the effortless coolness of McQueen is a classic case of the grass always being greener on the other side. In his eyes, he lacks that same quality, so he’s naturally drawn to other people who he thinks possess it. Although, Steve McQueen never played Batman, so who’s really cooler out of the two?
