Hard-working actor Christian Bale will next be seen in the dramatic film Rescue Dawn co-starring Steve Zahn and directed by Werner Herzog. But while doing the press rounds for that film, Bale had to do his best to answer questions about his second Batman movie, The Dark Knight, without giving away any specific details. Bale’s currently at work on The Dark Knight which reunites him with writer/director Christopher Nolan as well as Michael Caine as his trusty butler Alfred and Gary Oldman as Lt James Gordon. New additions to the cast include Heath Ledger as The Joker and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.
And speaking of those new additions, Bale’s thrilled with the choice of Ledger as The Joker. “Heath is a great choice for it,” said Bale. “I like him personally. He’s got a real kind of craving for playing that role so I think he’s going to do something really very different with it. We worked together briefly in the Todd Haynes movie [I’m Not There] as well.”
As for returning to the role of Batman, Bale is happy The Dark Knight is presenting him with a new set of challenges from what he accomplished with Batman Begins. Bale credits filmmaker Nolan with keeping it fresh. “I’ve got Chris Nolan who I’m working with for the third time now and he ain’t going to be making a movie if he’s not gonna be doing something very different with it, which he’s achieved in spades,” explained Bale, who doesn’t mind reprising the character. “Actually I’m liking very much the idea because I haven’t reprised a role ever before, and so I know it already and you know obviously there’ll be progress. We’ve got a great cast as well, and Chris and I work very well together so I know that we’re going to be finding an awful lot to add to it. …What we have now…we were confident before in what we wanted to do, but other people didn’t know. It was untested. Now the people support us completely too. So we’ve got all of that extra wall of support behind us to just kind of let rip and take it further.”
Bale knew what it took to get into shape to play Batman for the first film but this second movie required something a little different. “There are new things that I’m having to train for but, again, just in the same way that we kind of were untested before, they know that I know my right from my left now. [Laughing] They know that when I walk, the arm swings the right way and everything so there’s a little more confidence in me about my ability to pick things up quickly. We did start a while back in training, which I believe is a mystery for what we are training for..”
Being the star of a huge movie franchise has its perks, one of which is the ability to plan for the future, something Bale says he hadn't really experienced prior to the Batman movies. Playing Batman also helps get less publicized, lower-budgeted films off the ground. Bale explained, “What it does allow though is if something like Rescue Dawn [comes along…]. You know Werner [Herzog] and I have been talking about making it for a good two and a half years and I don’t know but I doubt it’s a huge coincidence that we got the financing pretty quick after I’d been in Batman. So it does mean that I can do these things in a much easier fashion versus a number of years back where, you know, like American Psycho took two years just because they didn’t want me in it."
Bale continued, "So, yes, certainly it helps with that, but in and of itself, I really like what Chris has done and working with him on Batman. I tell you it’s the only time in my life that I’ve been able to actually plan in the future because usually you know what you’re doing for the next two months - if you’re lucky - and then after that, you’ve got no idea. I’ve gone times when I’ve really needed to work and then there was no work coming in for me; I didn’t work for a year and a half or something. I guess having a franchise is the only time you can actually kind of sit back and go, ‘It’s all right,’ you know? ‘It’s gonna be okay. Even if nothing else happens, I know that that’s going to come along at some point.’ But you don’t even know that actually because they could dump me in a second if they want. [Laughing] It’s a good bet that we’ll be making that.”
