Nor do we discover anything if we affirm that Christian Bale is a great actor, but getting into the characters the way the Welsh-born actor does requires enormous sacrifice… and not only for him, but his colleagues also have to suffer his method at times. It is the case of Chloe Sevignythe actress who shared the screen with Bale in one of the most memorable scenes of ‘American Psycho’, and Josh Lucasanother cast member who played a co-worker of Patrick Bateman.
“I felt really intimidated by his process and by him.“Sevigny explained to Vanity Fair. “And I wanted a little more generosity from him to feel more comfortable, thinking selfishly. It was a really challenging dynamic for me, but I don’t think I thought he was bad. I was just a little confused, like ‘Why aren’t you sociable?’ I wasn’t even aware of what the ‘Method’ was. I never had any formal training; I believe in the simple ‘fake it until you make it’ [fake it till you make it]. But the whole Method thing made me think: What is this? “It was very intimidating.”
“I tried to respect their process,” Sevigny explains, “which I found very challenging because I’m very social, very goofy, even though people don’t know it. When people take themselves so seriously, I shut up.although I also take my job very seriously and I love acting and all that.”
In her conversation with Josh Lucas, who also had a major role in ‘American Psycho,’ Sevigny also clarified that part of her struggle to understand Bale’s process was due to the fact that both had been child stars, which often limits exposure to more traditional acting training. “It’s a little surprising that Christian is as emotionally involved as he is, because he started acting very young,” he concluded. “It’s not like he studied at university and then became methodological, Brando-esque.. He found this journey from being a child actor to an adult actor which I think is a really interesting trajectory, and it makes me very curious.”
Lucas confessed that his problem wasn’t so much with Bale’s unfriendly approach to his job, but that he simply didn’t understand the decisions Bale was making at all. “I don’t know if you felt that way, but really I remember thinking Christian Bale was horrible.” he said laughing. “I remember the first scene I did with him, I looked at it and it seemed so fake, and now I realize it was a fucking brilliant decision I was making.. He was an actor who was already on a completely different level. At the time I thought it was a fake performance, but it was exactly the opposite.”
The two actors also analyzed how Bale approaches his interpretation based on the Method compared to other more toxic performers, who use it as an excuse for their bad behavior. “There’s a big difference between bad Method actors, who I find really terrible to work with, and those like Christian,” Lucas reflected. “[Christian] doesn’t pay attention to anything other than what he’s doing. I have nothing but admiration for that, because a lot of Method actors actually get a little distracted by the fact that their process is more important than anything else, or anyone else.”
Fran Chico is an expert in cinema and series, specialized in cultural dissemination and film criticism. He is a recognized critic on Rotten Tomatoes and Filmaffinity. Although his favorite genre is horror, the same thing tells you about the new blockbuster from Marvel’s MCU and about an auteur film to claim from the festival circuit. There is no series from Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+ that escapes its radar, delving into the catalog of each platform to recommend and analyze its best content.
Fran has been writing in Fotogramas for more than a year, but his beginnings date back almost two decades ago in film forums and blogs such as Planeta Claqueta or Moviementarios. He was founder and part of the board of directors of the digital publication of film criticism and analysis Revista Mutaciones and a member of the Association of Cinematographic Informants of Spain (AICE), the organization that awards the Feroz Awards, as well as a voter for the Blogos de Oro al indie movies. After completing the Master of Film Criticism at the Madrid Film School (ECAM) taught by Caimán Cuadernos de Cine, he has collaborated and/or covered film festivals such as San Sebastián, Sitges and Filmadrid as a specialized press for more than 10 years, along the way interviewing relevant directors, actors and actresses from the national industry such as Penélope Cruz, Carlos Saura, Ana de Armas, José Luis Cuerda or José Sacristán and internationally such as James Wan, Edgar Wright or Dario Argento.
His knowledge and experience have led him to be a film video blogger for Fnac Spain and director and host of the podcast Holocausto Zinéfago, with more than 150 programs broadcast and available in which cinema and humor are mixed from a unique and original.
