Christian Bale (11 page)

Every day, David would serve Christian his breakfast in bed—a mug of hot tea, baked beans, scrambled eggs, and toast. “Who's the greatest actor in the world?” David would cheerfully ask at the door. And a sleepy-eyed Christian would meekly reply: “I am! I am!” David happily performed this ritual until Christian married and moved out of that house at age twenty-five.

“You have no idea how difficult it is to be an actor,” David would say to me. “My poor son faces rejection every day! His family must be positive and supportive. He must never be criticized!” David loved a pity party, I'd learn.

In his early days in L.A., Christian did face a lot of competition. He was considered for many films, including:
Alive
, directed by
Empire of the Sun
producer Frank Marshall. But the part went to rival Ethan Hawke; two Ridley Scott projects,
1492: Conquest of Paradise
and
White Squall
, which was down to Christian and Balthazar Getty;
Scent of a Woman
(lost to Chris O'Donnell);
A Far Off Place
(lost to Ethan Embry); and most disappointingly,
This Boy's Life
, which Christian lost to rival Leonardo DiCaprio.

Casting agents and producers had no doubt that Christian was a good actor, but in the early 1990s, they questioned whether he could convincingly play an American. There was the matter of physicality. Slender, pale Christian looked very English. The rosiness of his cheeks, Christian complained, was a genetic form of rosacea, common to those of Celtic background. Also, Christian was a British citizen, so producers would have to apply for work visas and have legitimate reasons as to why an American actor wouldn't be an easier choice to hire for the role.

Additionally, casting agents could hear that Christian spoke with a lisp, a product of his embarrassingly large overbite. In fact, Christian could bite his teeth together and stick his finger behind his top front two teeth. Christian would eventually have his teeth fixed for
American Psycho
, but until then, it was another
issue that eroded Christian's confidence. He continues to speak with a slight lisp to this day.

Christian's sharp-eyed fans, the Baleheads, noticed that he rarely smiled in photos. This was partly because of his dislike of publicity and partly a reflex that he had developed to avoid showing his teeth. The result was that Christian never looked particularly friendly in photos—a look that could be interpreted as overly serious, or intense.

Said Christian about his serious countenance: “If I have to acknowledge a camera, I tend to look like I'm receiving an injection.”

You can imagine that Christian was quite an uphill challenge for his agent to pitch: an actor who lisped, hated publicity, refused to smile, and was a paperwork-ridden foreign hire. To American producers, David pushed Christian's Spielberg experience. To European producers, Christian's British citizenship could satisfy any European investors' quota for European talent.

Christian decided it was racism, plain and simple. “Americans discriminate against the English. They are jealous, because any English actor can out-act an American. That's why they deny me work.”

While David was chasing after Christian's opportunities, glued to the phone in his home office/bedroom, he expected daughter Louise to take care of the house. She dutifully tried to cook and clean for her father and brother (both hopeless in the kitchen), juggling her full-time schoolwork at El Camino College, along with her theater work, social life, and assorted waitressing jobs.

David was a terrible cook. He only knew how to make scrambled eggs, beans, and toast. I once showed up for dinner where David's idea of a main course was a nuked cauliflower with dribbles of Cheese Wiz.

Christian was even more helpless in the kitchen. He once stuck a foil-wrapped potato in the microwave and jumped around frantically as sparks and arcing electricity crackled. It was easier for
Christian to run across Sepulveda Boulevard to grab some take-out chicken from Koo Koo Roo's. Or he could wait for Louise to cook something.

Louise Tabitha Bale is only eighteen months older than Christian, but her hopes and dreams of a film career ended back in Bournemouth when a joint brother-sister project fell through. Right after the U.K. premiere of
Empire of the Sun, The Sunday Express
had excitedly proclaimed: “The brother and sister double act from Bournemouth are set to take Hollywood by storm.” But the movie never happened. Indeed, it was
her
interest in drama, dance, and theater workshops that got Christian involved in show business.

When they were kids, Christian and Louise were practically like twins. David called Louise his “treasure” and called Christian “moosh.” He observed that brother and sister were like two peas in a pod, and they were inseparable growing up.

Louise remembered fondly: “Christian and I played together a lot as kids. We often played with other kids on our street, and we played games like ‘Family' where we would each take on a role of the member of a family, ‘Dad,' ‘Mum,' ‘Sister,' etc. and re-enact little dramas. We also played in the dirt a lot, dug up worms, made mud pies, rode our bikes down to the local candy shop and we also played in the woods a lot because we grew up in remote areas.”

Though Christian's official bio says that he became interested in animal rights after reading
Charlotte's Web
, it was actually Louise who had decided to become vegetarian at the tender age of nine. She recalled: “It was a book called
The Peppermint Pig
by Nina Bawden that I read when I was nine years old that affected me so deeply.”

Though close in age, David noticed that brother and sister had different approaches to life. “Louise charges in to scare away the demons,” David would say. “While Christian creeps in to avoid them.”

Eventually, I could see that Louise began to resent her pseudo-mother role, stuck with the cooking and cleaning and household chores. She and David argued often because David liked to drink and David could be an angry drunk. He was paranoid and critical about Louise's dates and he often jumped to conclusions that any of Louise's boyfriends who had any interest in show business were only interested in getting access to Christian to further their own careers.

In Los Angeles where show business is the primary industry, this wasn't necessarily a wrong conclusion. Siblings of celebrities often need to be wary of their friends and acquaintances' motives. Some families who move to Hollywood are very generous with their connections, hoping that good schmoozing and networking would be good karma and benefit all. Others, like David, are highly suspicious, defensive, and possessive of every hard-earned lead.

David would sigh: “My poor treasure works so hard with school and work, she's a living saint!” But a minute later, David would hiss: “I don't trust any of these boys that hang around Louise. She doesn't realize that they're just using her to get to my son.”

Louise had dated a young filmmaker, Darren Doane, who asked Christian to appear in a short film project called
Godmoney
. Though the short was never completed, you can see Christian's performance in the DVD of the full-length version of
Godmoney
as one of the extras. Christian and David were both unhappy that the footage was made public—the grungy performance of a smoking, scrawny, and shirtless Christian went against David's image objectives for his son, and the incorporation of the footage in the DVD only solidified David's suspicions of Louise's friends.

I got to witness firsthand Louise's quiet strength and determination a number of times and I wondered how tough it must be for Louise to be Christian's sister. At the Palm Springs Film Festival in 1996, David, Louise, and I stood in the theater lobby
after a screening of Christian's film
Metroland
. As the audience started streaming out, David proudly told people that it was his son who was the star of the movie. A number of people looked at Louise and asked her who she was.

“I'm Christian's sister,” she'd reply.

“Why, you're almost as cute as he is!” a couple said.

“Don't you wish you were as talented as your brother?” another couple asked.

“Do you get jealous that your brother is so handsome?” yet another couple asked.

And so on and so on, it seemed that Louise was standing there, unfairly being compared by complete strangers to a kid brother she had introduced to acting. Eventually, Louise began to stay at Oak Avenue less and less as her life steered her away from Christian and David. When she got her own place, visiting relatives would stay at her home, not at Oak Avenue.

David used to say, “There are two important questions that everyone must ask of themselves, and it must be in this order:

Where am I going?

Who is going with me?”

For Christian, after yet another promising start, it seemed as if he was back to square one. However, he would learn soon enough that he'd have new allies.

Christian and his dogs, Mojo and Codger, in Manhattan Beach, California.

R
emember the 1990s? (I'm sure some of you younger fans don't!) It's very weird for me to write about the inception of the Internet like a historical event, but in the past twenty years, the way we entertain, inform, and communicate has changed so much thanks to a network that has its origins in military paranoia when they created a way to play a shell game with data in the event of a nuclear attack. Christian's success on the Internet could only have happened in the early 1990s because movie buffs were just finding their voices online. People were craving information and looking for Web sites to visit. If television, radio, and film were the traditional media, dominated and controlled
by studios, networks, and advertising agencies, the Internet was like the ultimate public broadcast channel—open and free to all.

And Christian Bale would be its first star.

1992. The Internet was in its infancy as far as commercial use was concerned. There was no Amazon, no eBay, no Craigslist, no Facebook, and no Twitter. If you had a computer at home, it probably had a 486 processor running Windows 3.1, or it was a Macintosh LC. And if you wanted Internet access from your home, it was dial-up and you had a choice of using one of the hundreds of America Online (AOL) start-up disks or CDs they mailed out to you, or you used CompuServe.

That same year, Tim Burton's second
Batman
movie,
Batman Returns
, starring Michael Keaton as Batman, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, and Danny DeVito as the Penguin was a box office smash, finishing off 1992 as the third-highest grossing film.

But 1992 wasn't looking like a good year for Christian. From an actor's point of view, it's dangerous to have box office bomb after bomb, because producers get scared of anyone who reeks of that fatal cologne, Box Office Poison. Once actors get a box office poison rep, they lose opportunities for leading roles. Worse still, the salary an actor can negotiate—his “quote”—depends on his box office track record. A hot A-list movie star commands top quote, gets gross points (profit-sharing from the movie's gross revenue as opposed to net points), has his choice of roles, his command of cast, and potentially even his choice of directors. An up-and-coming actor? Refer to the proverb “Beggars can't be choosers.” Just look up John Travolta pre-and post-
Pulp Fiction
to see how a career can drastically change once you transition from “up-and-coming” to “established.”

There was plenty of blame to go around for
Newsies'
and
Swing Kids'
failures. Christian and his dad blamed first-time movie directors Kenny Ortega and Thomas Carter, Disney, for not marketing either picture, and Christian's Triad agent. Taking
his father's advice, Christian changed agencies and signed with William Morris, hoping a new agent could help change his luck and improve his opportunities as he searched for his remaining Disney picture in his three-picture deal.

However,
Newsies
did attract a couple of important fans. Winona Ryder loved
Newsies
and promptly ran out to rent everything Christian had appeared in. She was preparing to remake the American classic
Little Women
, based on the book by Louisa May Alcott, and was on the hunt to cast the role of Laurie, the rich young boy next door.