Christian Bale Avoided the Other American Psycho Actors

Chloe Sevigny in American Psycho. – Credit: C/O

Chloe Sevigny recalled: “Working with Christian was pretty hard because I didn’t know this whole Method thing. I was pretty fresh. I hadn’t done that many films before, and that an actor would lose himself to such a degree and was so consumed by the part, I was having a hard time kind of… just wanting to socialize with him, but feeling that he didn’t, and then my ego being like, ‘Does he not like me? Does he think I’m a terrible actress?’” She wasn’t alone. Guinevere Turner, who co-wrote the film with Harron and plays Elizabeth: “He was just so 100 percent committed as an actor to being this character, to a disturbing point. He never spoke in his real accent and he never socialized with anyone while we were shooting.”

Bale confirms he kept to himself: “Yeah. I start laughing if I know people too well. I start laughing in the middle of scenes. Especially with a character like that.” Interestingly, Bale may still continue that approach: He told IndieWire that he had to stop hanging out with Chris Rock on the set of his last film, Amsterdam: “Chris is so bloody funny and I found that I couldn’t act, because I was just becoming Christian laughing at Chris Rock.” When shooting wrapped, Sevigny met the real Bale: “When we were not shooting, doing press and stuff, he couldn’t have been a nicer guy,” she said.

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