Apparently, according to an interview that American Psycho director Mary Harron did for BlackBook Magazine, Christian Bale’s character Patrick Bateman was based loosely on TOM CRUISE…
The art of the onscreen murder was never staged with such graphic
gusto as when Mary Harron filmed Christian Bale slicing and dicing his
way through the excess of 80s Wall Street in American Psycho. Since then, the Canadian-born director has dabbled in television,
filming episodes of Big Love and Six Feet Under, as well as feature The
Notorious Bettie Page. Harron’s latest project is an entry in the Fear
Itself anthology, a television series broken down into 13 different
episodes and featuring some of the biggest names working in horror
today.
How did you and Christian Bale develop his character in American Psycho?
It was definitely a process. We talked a lot, but he was in L.A. and I
was in New York. We didn’t actually meet in person a lot, just talked
on the phone.
We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was
looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what
people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one
day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David
Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing
behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy
YES. You can see it now, can’t you?
Kath says
“…intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes…” says it all.
Jen says
Absolutely. I just got a shiver…