The Dark Knight Christian Bale on the cover of GQ March 2007

[elorenishii386]

Yes, this is the best picture of the lot. LOVE the beard - very manly and hot. Okay, I need a lie down.

it's also the expression on his face...He's going out into the world sayn'..."yea...I know i'm hot!"

 

[Two-Face]

OMG!
OMG!
Too much hotness!!!
I'm about to explode!!!



(sigh)
damn it! all the good ones have to be married

He needs a shave for TDK!

 

[regwec]

He needs to bulk up, again, as well. I feel sypathy for him- he has to put his body through hell all the time for his roles. It's another reason the shoot TDK and its sequel in quick succession.

 

[imadreamer]

here is some part of the interview...
http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5410

Can someone please post the text? This link is blocked for me at work. Thanks!

 

[ChrisBaleBatman]

Solid Snake. He needs to play Solid Snake. Those pictures just scream it, I think.

 

[elorenishii386]

This is only part of the interview:

CHRISTIAN ROCKS!
Whether they’re hacking up prostitutes or saving Gotham, Christian Bale’s characters always seem most comfortable in isolation. But as Nate Penn is able to tease out in an enlightening interview, Bale, on top of being one of the great working actors, is a pretty well-adjusted guy

Even in a career in which you’ve demonstrated an amazing ability to pull off accents—I can’t think of another British actor who does an American accent so well—the one you do for Dieter in Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn is kind of a tour de force: the speech of a man born in Germany who came of age in America, as delivered by an actor born in Wales.
The Germans I was working with told me that people from the Black Forest have a slightly strange accent, even for Germans, and beyond that Dieter had a very exaggerated way of speaking. In Werner’s 1997 documentary about him, you see clips from when he’s younger; it’s a wild accent. But I did bring it down, because if I’d done it exactly as he would do it, it would have intruded into everything. I could have done an American accent, but I felt, No, this is part of who he is. Werner pretty much just let me do whatever I wanted for that. To this day, I don’t think he noticed that I did an accent.
Is that usually where you begin when you’re constructing a role—with the voice?
I don’t feel like I’m really able to start inventing any character until I have the voice down. I’m actually not a natural with accents. People who are naturals, they can talk in their own accent and then switch—bang!—into another one. I can’t do that, so it’s essential to me to maintain an accent throughout working. The most important thing is trying it out in your everyday life. You start with strangers in shops, restaurants. You might feel like a fool, but they don’t know that you’re speaking in a different voice. And then eventually with your friends and family until everyone just knows, All right, this is what he’s doing for the next few weeks. And that way you don’t feel like an idiot every time you hear “Action!”

You’ve been very clear in interviews that you’re not a Method actor, that you don’t use events from your own life to inform your work. Where do you find the emotions for a role? And how did you find them when you were 13, for your performance in Empire of the Sun?
I have no idea. I really don’t. But yeah, even at that age it just felt dirty if I was thinking about my own family while I was trying to do some scene. I just prefer to kind of wipe myself clean and really just pretend to be the character. Take that to a level where you really are believing and feeling. Occasionally, that can very much lead you to question your own thoughts and beliefs and approaches to things. Oh, man, sometimes that can be tiring. You’ve just got to have humorous friends and family around you who are prepared to tolerate this new outlook on life that you adopt with each and every character. My wife’s got favorites. I recently did a movie called Harsh Times, in which I played a Gulf War vet who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that was a tricky one to be around.

Your experience doing the worldwide publicity junket for Empire of the Sun seems to have shaped the attitude toward the media you’ve maintained ever since.
I was at a hotel in Paris, and I got sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Instead of speaking, I started jabbing an orange with a pencil. That felt like the more honest thing to be doing at the time, you know? I’d answered every question under the sun, and they were asking the same ones, and I was sort of stabbing the orange instead. And then right after that, actually, I did just say—I had a whole day of interviews, and I did just say, “I can’t do this,” and I just took off¬ and walked around Paris for the day. It was great just walking around knowing that there were all these people in a panic.
Unlike a lot of child stars, you’ve made a seamless transition to adult roles—and you’ve never gotten into any trouble with the law. But did growing up in the film business leave any kind of mark on you, do you think?
Quite frequently, I’ve been talking to somebody, telling a story, and then I realize halfway through, This didn’t happen. It can be anything. After a few years, you can’t differentiate between the clarity of something you’ve played and a real event. I &#64257 that funny. I have some friends who &#64257 it very sad and disturbing. Have you ever seen a movie called Ponette? If you want to see child acting—I mean, it’s disturbing how good it is. You have to worry about how they’re treating that young girl to elicit that performance from her, but it’s so good. There’s something just a little wrong about working professionally at that young an age. I appreciated it very much because it was a difficult time for my family, and I was able to help support them, and it actually was something of a salvation for us. But in a perfect world, I wouldn’t have started doing this at that age.

On the making-of featurette on the Empire of the Sun DVD, we see Spielberg filming you during the scene in which the internment camp is bombed. You’re on the roof of a building, and he’s directing you to run around and wave your arms and shout, but when it comes time to shoot this involved and complicated and expensive scene, you seem to freeze up. Afterward, Spielberg says, in effect, “Christian, what happened?”
The first I knew that I’d screwed up that scene is when I saw it on that featurette, and I looked and went, “Really? I messed that whole thing up?” Apparently, I was standing right in front of where all the explosions were going off¬. I was blocking everything. I could see Steven was really trying to hold himself together. I do laugh when I see that played back, because I can see on my face that I’m just not really listening. I can see that I’m just pretending this is not happening. He’s talking to me, and I’m going, like, “I don’t know. Nothing to do with me.” I’m not really taking it in that such a big disaster just occurred. I’m just going, “Eh, what’s to be done about it? We’ll get it right next time, but I’m not gonna sit here and get upset about it.” That was kind of how I dealt with most of the movie. I had a great time. I never felt any pressure. To me it was just, “Hey, look, guys, I’m doing what I do. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. What else can I do for you?”

You’ve said that one reason you might have avoided the fates of other child stars of your era is that your first role was a character role, so you didn’t have to endure people rejecting you because you’d outgrown your cuteness. I wondered if you think living in Britain might have played a role, too. In America your classmates would have celebrated you, but it doesn’t seem like that happened to you in Britain.
Well, I can’t remember what I said that was true and what wasn’t true. When you’re doing these long days of press junkets, you kind of want to entertain yourself, and sometimes I’ve let other people guide the conversation. So they might say something like, “Oh, so you were bullied at school.” And I’m like, “Huh?” But I don’t say that. I go, “Yeah, yeah, it was really terrible.” Because you want to entertain yourself. I’m not a politician or something, so it doesn’t matter if I’m telling tall tales now and then. And there’s no maliciousness behind it; it’s purely that on that particular day, I was just bored with telling the real story.
Sissy Spacek once told me that she feels her performance in Badlands, her first featured role, represents the pinnacle of her career, precisely because she didn’t know anything about acting at the time. Is there a little bit of that for you with Empire of the Sun?
You can’t really compete with a first-timer. If you get a first-timer who is just really right there with the character, I don’t care who you are or how lauded an actor you are, you can’t compete with that. So what does that mean? I shouldn’t have ever done another performance and left it at that? No, I’m addicted, you know? But I recognize the nature of it. I do think that you ruin yourself. You’re making it harder for yourself with each and every movie that you do.

For the full article, pick up the March issue of GQ.

 

[imadreamer]

This is only part of the interview:

Thanks!

 

[Moose]

I think I know what you are talking about. When I was watching The Prestige when it first came out, I kept thinking there was something weird going on with his face, right underneath his eyes.

He does have a scar underneath his right eye, sometimes it's more noticeable than at other times. He hasn't always had it, but it's been there quite a while.

As for the cover and other photos, I think they come across better in person. I didn't have a problem with the scans (and thanks to whoever brought them over!) since I always think he looks great, but I think they lose a certain something. Definitely improves seeing the original, imo.

 

[McGourgh]

That's real.

****ing aye.....Bale looks more and more like Solid Snake everytime I see him.

With a Metal Gear Solid movie officially being in production now (they just named the producer), who knows.....

Although Jackman is still my number one choice

 

[Damiean Dark]

Jackman has more of a physical presence especially when he is bulked up like when he plays wolvie

 

[Hades]

That's real.

****ing aye.....Bale looks more and more like Solid Snake everytime I see him.

Wow he does.

And he does look a little haggard for a 33 year old but I think it's the beard and hair more then anything. But atl east his beard isn't all firey red looking
his fire beard creeps me out.

 

[Retroman]

Damn james brolin has to be bale's real father

Wow....

 

[Brian Braddock]

I just hope Bale doesnt come on these boards and reads that -considering that his real father died not so long ago.

 

[Retroman]

I just hope Bale doesnt come on these boards and reads that -considering that his real father died not so long ago.

My own dad passed away 19 months ago. If someone posted a pic like that it wouldn't anger or sadden me i think.

Besides i don't think it was superkong's intention to be harmfull. It's just that the resmblance to Brolin is remarkable.

 

[princevaliant81]

No argument on the James Brolin resemblance but I hope Bale does not look this way for TDK because he does not look well.

 

[darwinwins]

Looking a bit Christ-like at present...

i didn't know christ was white -- or real for that matter.

 

[Castlewood]

it's ok for a guy to say another guy is good-looking, we're not 13 year old kids

Well, I'm a guy, and I'm 100% straight.... and I have to say, Christian Bale looks AMAZING in those pictures.

 

[StorminNorman]

i didn't know christ was white -- or real for that matter.

lol, neither his race nor his existence/lack their of had nothing to do with what the guy said.

Good try at trying to be witty, but you lose

 

[regwec]

i didn't know christ was white -- or real for that matter.

I could have said that Bale resembled Western pictorial depictions from the renaissance of a notable Hebrew religious leader and social revolutionary of the 1st century AD, but would that have made you happier?

 

[drunkhomer]

I think bale is really good looking with clean shaven and his hair nicely groomed hair, more like in BB, american psyco and shaft, seems like after he did BB, he always looks like he's trying to be a hobo (yes i know its because of his movie roles...)
he better start pumping some iron, looking a lil skinny there

 

[granturismohalo]

I dont like this look either. Im a preppy clean shaven guy so I dont like those guys that look like they havent showered in weeks or they just got out of bed.

 

[Zopwx2]

Man why is everyone so anti-beard. I think he looks badass.

 

[Monkey Chops]

If his wife isn't complaining, who are we to?

 

[kenellard]

his mistress

 

[Darkest Knight]

Coolest actor on the planet next to Jack Nicholson.