Christian Bale Interview, The Dark Knight

 Posted by: Sheila Roberts
We had a chance to sit down with Batman himself, Christian Bale about his upcoming movie The Dark Knight. As a follow up to the blockbuster "Batman Begins", Christopher Nolan is set to direct Warner Bros. Pictures' "The Dark Knight", written by Jonathan Nolan, based on a story by Christopher Nolan and David Goyer. The film will be produced by Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan.

Additionally, Christian Bale will resume his role as Bruce Wayne and Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger has been cast as The Joker. Production is set to begin on "The Dark Knight" in early 2007. Rather then do a long and windy intro, here it be.  

Q: This is the second time that you’ve lost a lot of weight in a very short amount of time and now you’ve had to gain it all back again to start the Batman movie. Is that healthy?

CHRISTIAN BALE: I really actually didn’t lose a whole lot of weight for this one [Rescue Dawn]. You know there’s a lot of good make-up and I just wanted to do enough to give kind of an indication of time and everything for it, but it really wasn’t anything on the scale of The Machinist. I wouldn’t do that again. I’ve kind of conquered that in my mind and don’t need to prove that to myself again.

Q: Steve Zahn says you guys were trading off cowboy stories because you just did the prequel to Lonesome Dove and 3:10 to Yuma.

CHRISTIAN BALE: Yeah, I did 3:10 to Yuma as well. It’s great. I mean, look, it can all stop very quick but right now it’s great. We get to go from the jungles of Thailand to New Mexico shooting guns and riding horses out there and chewing tobacco and not squatting with your spurs on. [Laughs] I followed him out there and everywhere I went, Steve had been. Everyone had stories about Steve, ‘Oh, of course, Steve did this, Steve did that.’ ‘Oh yeah, hey, how ya doing? Steve was in here.’

Q: He said he wanted a part in 3:10 but you guys were better so he never got the role.

 
CHRISTIAN BALE: Ah, he’s joking there. No, he would’ve been great in that.
 
Q: You seem to be somebody who always wants to do something new and play interesting and diverse characters. How hard is it to go back and play Batman again? Is there something new you can bring to the character?
CHRISTIAN BALE: You’ve got to see with the other versions, you know, it wasn’t my cup of tea anyway. I didn’t really keep it going. But I’ve got Chris Nolan who I’m working with for the third time now and he ain’t going to be making a movie if he’s not gonna be doing something very different with it which he’s achieved in spades. Actually I’m liking very much the idea because I haven’t reprised a role ever before and so I know it already and you know obviously there’ll be progress.
 
We’ve got a great cast as well, and Chris and I work very well together so I know that we’re going to be finding an awful lot to add to it. It’s certainly not… The last thing it is is treading water. What we have now…we were confident before in what we wanted to do but other people didn’t know. It was untested. Now the people support us completely too. So we’ve got all of that extra wall of support behind us to just kind of let rip and take it further.

Q: As an actor, how important is it to have a franchise character that you can go back to that allows you to do things like Rescue Dawn?

 
CHRISTIAN BALE: Well, I’d be doing things like this movie anyway because it’s not like if I didn’t have the franchise, I’d say, ‘No, I can’t make Rescue Dawn.’ What it does allow though is if something like Rescue Dawn [comes along…]. You know Werner [Herzog] and I have been talking about making it for a good two and a half years and I don’t know but I doubt it’s a huge coincidence that we got the financing pretty quick after I’d been in Batman. So it does mean that I can do these things in a much easier fashion versus a number of years back where, you know, like American Psycho took two years just because they didn’t want me in it.
 
So, yes, certainly it helps with that, but in and of itself, I really like what Chris has done and working with him on Batman. I tell you it’s the only time in my life that I’ve been able to actually plan in the future because usually you know what you’re doing for the next two months if you’re lucky and then after that, you’ve got no idea. And I’ve gone times when I’ve really needed to work and then there was no work coming in for me and I didn’t work for a year and a half or something. I guess having a franchise is the only time you can actually kind of sit back and go ‘It’s alright, you know, it’s gonna be okay. Even if nothing else happens, I know that that’s going to come along at some point.’ But you don’t even know that actually because they could dump me in a second if they want. [Laughs] It’s a good bet that we’ll be making that.

Q: Can you talk a little about your training for Dark Knight? Did you have to train a lot?

CHRISTIAN BALE: There are new things that I’m having to train for but again, just in the same way that we kind of were untested before, they know that I know my right from my left now. [Laughs] They know that when I walk, the arm swings the right way and everything so there’s a little more confidence in me [laughs] about my ability to pick things up quickly. We did start a while back in training which I believe is a mystery for what we are training for. [Laughs]

Q: During The Prestige I asked you if Batman is always considered the great detective or the best detective in the world, are we going to see that side of the Dark Knight?

CHRISTIAN BALE: [Takes a long, slow sip of his Perrier water and pauses] So if that’s clear enough. I hope that satisfies you. [Laughs]

Q: Are you looking forward to working with Heath as The Joker?

CHRISTIAN BALE: Absolutely. Heath is a great choice for it. I like him personally. He’s got a real kind of craving for playing that role so I think he’s going to do something really very different with it. We worked together briefly in the Todd Haynes movie as well.

Q: What do you have coming up after Batman or have you not thought that far ahead?

CHRISTIAN BALE: Working? No, I have no idea. We do that [Dark Knight] for the rest of the year.

Q: You’re in London in a couple weeks?

CHRISTIAN BALE: Yeah.

Q: As an actor, is it a little weird to be in a movie that’s going to film for that long and be that intense?

CHRISTIAN BALE: Well they did it on the first one as well, you know, and I know the crowd. I know everybody now.

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