Batman in the making

June 15, 2005 - 11:09AM
Christian Bale poses during a photocall in a Parisian hotel for Batman begins.

Photo: AFP

Christian Bale is the new Batman, but he could also be called the Incredible Shrinking Man.

The Incredible Hulk could fit too.

No man in Hollywood - including the McDonald's guzzling Morgan Spurlock in the documentary Super Size Me - has put his body through as much torture for the sake of film as what Bale has in recent years.

What Bale has done is extreme and potentially life-threatening.

Doctors cautioned Bale he risked permanent damage to his body, but the disciplined Welsh-born actor decided he needed to shape his 188cm tall frame to properly portray totally opposite characters in back-to-back films.

He had just five months to do it.

The torture test began in 2004 with the film, The Machinist.

In the dark thriller Bale was playing an industrial worker who had not slept for a year. He was dying from insomnia.

Bale, who normally weighs 80kg, hardly ate for months.

When he walked on to The Machinst's set for the first day of filming he weighed just 54kg.

Five months later he was to play the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins.

The new Batman film takes the superhero back to his early days and details how a young, tormented Bruce Wayne grooms himself to become a lethal warrior.

Bale walked on the London set of Batman Begins weighing 100kg.

"It was quite an arduous journey," Bale, looking healthy and weighing back around the 80kg mark, said in an interview in Beverly Hills recently.

"Batman has no super powers so we couldn't get away with him looking like a Joe Schmo who never works out.

"He has to be someone who has honed his fighting skills and is in incredibly good shape."

To fill out his Batman suit Bale stuffed himself with food and when he was not eating he was in the gym.

"I think to be honest losing weight required more mental discipline, but ultimately leads you to a place of great calmness and real comfort mentally when you reach a certain point," he said.

"I think it was far less healthy actually putting on the weight.

"I was lifting really heavy weights and just stuffing so much into my mouth.

"My body was under so much pressure I could feel it. I had a doctor say to me 'You are going nuts. You have to slow down'."

Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan, best known for his Oscar nominated independent film Memento, starring Australia's Guy Pearce, had been impressed with Bale's performances in American Psycho and The Machinist.

The director was not prepared for what he saw when Bale arrived at the London studio ready to play Batman.

"I turned up in England and I was bearded and had long hair and I was walking down the hallway and Chris Nolan was walking towards me and I said 'Hi Chris' and he had absolutely no idea who I was," Bale said.

"When he got close he was like 'Holy f... You look like Grizzly Adams. What's going on?'

"Then he said: 'OK, well you did OK, you got really good like how we asked you to, but maybe ... could get you a little leaner now'.

"Chris was nice about it, but there were some others, like some English guys in the crew who I'd worked with before who weren't so gentle.

"They said 'Hey Chris, what film are we making here? Fatman?'."

Batman Begins co-star, Michael Caine, who plays Batman's butler Alfred Pennyworth, was also stunned.

"I remembered him in American Psycho and The Machinist as a very slight young man," Caine said.

"The first day I arrived on set he looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"He had turned himself into this huge guy."

Bale's status in Hollywood has also ballooned.

Batman Begins, a $US120 million ($A157 million) potential blockbuster, takes the happily-married, father of one young daughter, to a new level in Hollywood.

Paparazzi have not bothered him, but that will change when Batman Begins, and the likely sequels he is signed up to do, hit cinemas.

Bale hopes the fame thing does not happen.

"I have no idea whatsoever what fame means," he says.

"In all honesty how can you prepare for anything like that?

"I like to believe there's a certain amount of control in attitude you can have. I'm just going to find out."

Celebrity is not something he craved when he started as an actor and he almost rejected the offer to play Batman because of the expected fame it would bring him.

"It's the one thing I was very nervous about taking on this movie," Bale said.

"I loved the character. I loved the way Chris Nolan wanted to make the movie.

"The only negative thing I thought of was that, the consequences.

"Alright, what if I become a celebrity? That always seemed so hideous to me.

"I decided I didn't want to be fearful of what potentially was a really great movie that I would just deal with it when I came to it.

"I'm hoping it will also be dictated very much by the choice of other movies I make.

"You seem to get a lot of actors who do a big movie like this and that's all they ever want to do again and they start living in this rarified way.

"I just have no interest in that whatsoever.

"I want to continue to to make diverse movies and hopefully that will help me escape the trappings of being celebrity star."

Batman Begins opens in Australian cinemas on June 16.

