Notes from E Online
" ... I don't really live anywhere. I break up my time between [L.A.] and London. When I'm in London, I don't want to spend any time in L.A., and when I'm in here [in L.A.], I actually enjoy it." --Bale quoted in Flaunt, Fall/Winter 1998.
"I enjoy obsession. It makes you feel alive when you've got something that you're generally obsessed with and something to really fixate on. But I believe I've been able to maintain a kind of sense of humor with it, you know? An enjoyable playing with it, so that it hasn't really - I hope - affected any of my family in a negative way whatsoever."---Bale on some of the extreme measures he takes to prepare for his acting roles, to the Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2006.
"I felt so dried up for a couple of years and wasn't interested in what I was doing. I was desperately struggling to be interested, but it wasn't happening ... I know some of the emotion went out of my work, but I think I've managed to get it back ... That's because I could risk making a complete fool of myself in front of the people I was working with, which is always when you give your best performances. You might say to yourself, What are you doing? But you just can't stop yourself doing it, and walking that line is the best feeling you can get as an actor." --Bale to Graham Fuller in Interview, December 1998.
"I have a fear of being boring. The more high-profile I get, the less I can surprise people anymore. I've managed it very well. Nobody has a clue who I am, so it's worked." --Christian Bale to Entertainment Weekly, October 11, 1996.
"I like scary movies. As a kid I liked to take walks in the woods at night after a scary movie to see if I could get the hairs standing up on the back of my neck."---Bale quote in EW June 25/July 2, 2004
"I was living in Bournemouth and suddenly everybody knew who I was. I remember sitting in this cafe with some friends and this girl came up, who obviously didn't recognise me, and started going on about how she was going out with Christian Bale. I'd go down to the public toilets and see things written about me on the wall. Guys would start fights with me. The local paper took pictures of me getting back from school, then wrote features about I wouldn't open a girls' school fete. I just felt like a dick, you know? I was 14; I didn't want to stand there next to the mayor with a big pair of scissors, but they started saying I was big-headed, that I'd forgotten where I came from. I didn't come from there, anyway." --Christian Bale quoted in The Independent, August 6, 1998.
"I'm not at all surprised about his huge following. He's very personable, and he's very serious about his work." --Christopher Hampton, writer-director of "The Secret Agent", quoted in Entertainment Weekly, October 11, 1996.
"I've gone through periods of depression during lengthy hiatuses. Everybody wants a sense of purpose, and when your mind's set on doing one thing and it's not happening, you just feel useless."---Bale to GQ magazine, March 2007.
"It's important for an actor to have a certain amount of mystery. Personally, I love going to see a film where you can really watch a character. If you've just read some article about who the actor is sleeping with, that's gonna be in the back of your mind all the time you're watching the film. And obviously the more press you do, the less you're able to maintain that mystery." --Bale to Brendan Lemon in Interview, February 1998.
About being hired by Steven Spielberg: "At that age you are completely fearless. I wasn't really a film fan at all. Probably the only director I could have named was Spielberg. But I mean, I was like, 'Yeah, so what?' I was only slightly intimidated by the fact that it was his film and that I had the burden of carrying it." --From The Dallas Morning News, December 25, 1998.
About his role in "Newsies", Bale told Michael Atkinson in Movieline, March 1997: "I never had any interest in doing a musical. I still don't. In fact, when I first read the script, I thought it wasn't a musical. Later, after I realized it was, I asked Kenny [director Kenny Ortega] if maybe I could duck over here into the pub while the numbers were going on, and then come out when it was over. I hoped I could be the lead in a musical without doing any singing and dancing! Eventually I said, 'Fuck it, let's just do it.' But I had a lot of doubts about it--I never liked musicals, and even then I knew I'd never do anything like that again."
His official website is located at
www.christianbale.org.
On his Internet fans: "It gives me a sort of smug smile that there are people who very thoroughly appreciate my work and talk about it. Some people would think it's creepy, but it doesn't enter into my daily life." --From Time Out New York, April 8-15, 1999.
On negotiating the transition from child actor to adult performer: "I've been very lucky because there wasn't a sudden leap where people were saying, 'Oh, what a cute kid,' and then it's 'Bloody hell, what happened there, he's got zits and hair in his armpits--he must be spending a lot of time alone in his room.' Of course, I WAS spending a lot of time alone in my room." --From Movieline, March 1997.
On taking the part in "American Psycho": " ... frankly, I've always admired actors who appear not to pay a great deal of attention to the reaction but rather to their own choices and keeping themselves interested in their own careers and in the roles. It's something I'm happy to take flack for."
