Christian Bale (10 page)

Both David and Christian's agent believed in the old Hollywood advice that any actor yearning for a career of longevity and substance had to follow the rule: “Do one for the studio, then one for yourself.” Essentially, do a studio film to make the studio money, so you have the freedom to do an indie film of your choice to show off your acting skills.

Initially in 1991, Christian's career was looking pretty good. He had a three-picture deal with Disney, so that took care of his big studio obligations. After shooting
Newsies
, Christian found a small project he wanted to do,
Prince of Jutland
. Most British actors consider Shakespeare's
Hamlet
a true test of acting mettle, and here was an oddball indie film that was going back to the source legends that served as Shakespeare's basis for Hamlet.

Prince of Jutland
was an independent film. By comparison, studio films—financed and produced by a major studio—have their own distribution network. A simplified definition of an “independent film” is a film without studio funding and seeking a distributor, presumably after making the tours of film market and festivals.

On paper, this looked like a very prestigious project. Gabriel Axel, an Oscar-winning director, was at the helm, the interpretation of
Hamlet
was inventive and fresh, and the cast was chock-full of impressive British actors. Christian starred as young Prince Amled. His love interest was a very young Kate Beckinsale (
Underworld
) with whom he'd reunite many years later in
Laurel Canyon
. His costars included: Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Gabriel Byrne (his future
Little Women
costar), Tom Wilkinson, as well as future stars Ewen Bremner (
Trainspotting
) and Andy Serkis (
The Lord of the Rings
).

Unfortunately, Gabriel Axel was seventy-six at the time and in poor health, so, disappointingly, the final cut of
Prince of Jutland
seemed unfinished and uninspired. As a result, the film couldn't find a distributor for a theatrical release in North America. For Christian's fans though, it's an important film, as it featured Christian's first nude scene.

“Yes, it's true,” Christian said. “Set foot on Danish soil and clothes seem to become a burden. Almost everyone in the film had a go at a nude scene.”

The good-natured production helped Christian relax for his scene where, at night in a barn's rafters, he crawls nude through the hay, bare bubble butt in full view, to hit a prying Steven Waddington on the head with a stick.

Christian recalled: “Axel kept yelling to me: ‘No pee-pee! No pee-pee!' So I kept my chest and stomach down and ended up all scratched up by the coarse hay. I had red marks on my body for weeks.”

Director Axel also had a laugh at Christian's gestures in a scene with Brian Cox when Cox presents Christian with a foot-long wooden shaft. While the two talk, Christian absentmindedly begins to stroke the upright shaft until Axel had to yell: “Cut! You look like you are playing with your pee-pee!”

Prince of Jutland
failed to find a distributor and languished for years until Christian's fans—the mighty Baleheads—campaigned to get Miramax to release it on video, heavily reedited with a new title,
Royal Deceit
.

Prince of Jutland
was Christian's first experience with an independent film and all its distribution challenges. And after seeing the uneven work, Christian was happy to add this title to his Omitted From Résumé list.

What a difference twelve months can make. By 1992, Christian Bale's career was looking a little shaky. American producers, if they had heard of him at all, only vaguely knew him as the former child star of Spielberg's biggest bomb,
Empire of the Sun
. By April, Christian was also known as the teen star of Disney's
biggest bomb,
Newsies
. His European indie film,
Prince of Jutland
, couldn't find a distributor. In some Hollywood circles, he had earned the nickname “Christian Fail.” Fortunately, Christian thought, he had his next big studio film coming out soon—
Swing Kids
!

Shot in Prague, Czechoslovakia,
Swing Kids
was not released until March 1993.
Swing Kids
was another pricey big production for Disney under their Hollywood Pictures label. Like
Newsies, Swing Kids
was also loosely based on a true story. It was about the growing power of the Nazi party and the creation of the Hitler Youth—sort of a Boy Scouts for fascists. In pre-World War II Hamburg, a group of swing kids—German teenagers who loved American big band swing music—defied the Nazis and the peer pressure of the Hitler Youth until they were either beaten and imprisoned or converted into polka-loving Aryans. Nazi Germany eventually banned American jazz music.

It was a terribly flawed movie. Robert Sean Leonard played the defiantly idealistic swing kid, while Christian got to play his first dark character, Thomas, a former swing-kid-turned-Nazi who betrays his family and friends. Kenneth Branagh was rumored to be so unhappy with the final cut of the movie that he requested his name be removed from the credits.

Christian fondly remembered the days before he was a star, when he could wander around Prague during the
Swing Kids
shoot. He told a reporter: “There's a great feeling of being completely anonymous, knowing that I can walk around the city and I'm not going to bump into anybody that I know, at all. It's sort of quite liberating, and you do silly things. I do remember, like, in Prague, for instance, my girlfriend coming up to visit me. We all went to this club. And, you know, we'd all been, the other actors and me, we'd all been going down to these clubs. So we get down there and just act like we always have done each time. Which is like complete and utter knobs. Completely aware that we're in a
city that sort of—there aren't really consequences to what we do, that we're gonna be leaving, so it doesn't matter.”

Making his big-screen directorial debut, Thomas Carter was best known for his work as a director of the television series
Hill Street Blues
. Though Carter would go on to score a hit with the 2001 dance movie
Save the Last Dance
, he had his hands full dealing with Christian shooting
Swing Kids
.

David recalled dealing with faxes and phone calls from Carter as the director struggled to communicate with Christian: “I had to talk to Thomas Carter about Christian and explain that my son was not rude. He listens but does not necessarily acknowledge. Christian doesn't like unnecessary verbiage.”

David tried another tact. He remembered pleading with Carter to help Christian be a better actor: “I asked him to encourage Christian to be emotional and passionate and expressive. He had to understand that my son came from an English background of restraint and repression!”

Christian worked very hard on
Swing Kids
, mastering a light American accent but more importantly, he learned how to swing dance. It looked as if his childhood dance training and
Newsies
experience would come in handy.

“We had a couple weeks of dance rehearsal,” Christian recalled. “For
Swing Kids
, we did the Lindy Hop, named after Charles Lindberg's trans-Atlantic flight.”

Christian remembered studying the 1941 film
Hellzapoppin'
, which featured the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, one of the most famous swing dance troupes.

Unfortunately, like
Newsies
, the critics hated
Swing Kids
.

And, like
Newsies, Swing Kids
was a huge bomb for Disney's Hollywood Pictures subsidiary, grossing just $5.6 million. Christian Fail was getting a reputation as box office poison.

Variety
, the pulse of Hollywood, analyzed the movie: “A fascinating footnote of Second World War Nazi Germany is trivialized and sanitized in Hollywood Pictures' odd concoction of music and politics known as
Swing Kids
. It has precious little to entice audiences into movie theaters. It will probably replicate the commercial performance of the company's near-catastrophic
Newsies.”

Critic Leonard Maltin summed it up nicely in his annual movie and video guide: “This year's
Newsies
, and poor Bale is in both.”

It was little consolation that
Swing Kids'
retro soundtrack preceded the swing revival of the late 1990s.

Devastated by his second big studio bomb for Disney, Christian decided that one common factor was that he could not work with inexperienced directors again. Both
Newsies
and
Swing Kids
had been helmed by first-time movie directors. Christian vowed not to be anyone's guinea pig again.

The proverb “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan” is never more true than in Hollywood. Though David agreed wholeheartedly with his son's assessment that inexperienced directors
were to blame for the two Disney bombs, producers would look at the only apparent common element—Christian Bale. Was Christian Fail truly box office poison? Did this mean that Christian's career would begin to backslide from leading man to supporting roles? It was time to rethink Christian's career strategy.

As Christian's manager, David was anxious for Christian to improve his marketability by broadening his skill set. He made plans for Christian to take a number of skill-building lessons like scuba diving, Spanish, martial arts, stunt work, supercross, and tennis. Of course, these plans depended on Christian's actually being in Los Angeles, but Christian was difficult to schedule as he continued to split his time between England and the U.S.

Ask any actor and they'll tell you it's important to have sports skills or a command of dialects and languages when you're looking for work. The more skills you possess, the better your chances of a casting director leaning your way. When Christian was a child, he had landed a small part in
Land of Faraway
because David had assured the casting director that Christian could ride a horse. In the two weeks before starting that shoot, David made sure Christian learned how to ride a horse!

While David was all about positive reinforcement and optimism, he also had to protect Christian's sensitive psyche. Thanks to the trauma by publicity chores for
Empire of the Sun
, Christian abhorred the business and marketing side of movies—something essential for an actor to understand and appreciate if he wanted a Hollywood career. And with two additional box office bombs under his belt, Christian needed a change of luck.

Though David was concerned about Christian accumulating skills that would make him more marketable as an actor, he was beyond overprotective. Most struggling actors who arrive in L.A. get jobs as waiters. It's the perfect job to expose an actor to different people and personalities; an essential skill of acting is to convey a range of human conditions. It's also a job that allows an
actor to learn new skills and schedule auditions and workshops throughout the day.

But Christian could not legally work in the U.S. without a work visa, and David didn't think Christian needed to go to acting classes because he had already been educated by his work experience with Spielberg, Heston, and Ortega. “Christian's talent is natural!” David would argue. “He has no need for classes. Acting coaches are just failed actors anyway.”

David didn't want Christian to worry about anything except his career. “Stay focused on acting,” David would say to Christian, “and Dad will take care of the rest.” Christian trusted his father implicitly—had he not been a financial advisor back in England?

So the House of Bale in Manhattan Beach had an odd dynamic. Father David was on a visitor's visa and could not legally work. Sister Louise was on a student's visa and could not legally work. Everyone depended on the fortunes of an eighteen-year-old boy. Unintentionally or not, Christian was surrounded by enablers—a troubling fact of life for a child actor whose career had mutated the traditional roles of parent and sibling.

Balancing being Christian's father, manager, and dependent, David created an unusual atmosphere at 3101 Oak Avenue. David was like Mr. Collins around Lady Catherine de Bourgh from
Pride and Prejudice
. Christian was the absolute young lord and master of the house. Christian often went out in the evenings until the early morning hours and didn't wake up until after noon. When he was sleeping upstairs, everyone had to be quiet. David shushed and silenced himself whenever Christian spoke. Father and son arranged an elaborate way of communication; each step of stairs leading up to Christian's bedroom had neat piles of scripts with David's notes and the railing was feathered with yellow and blue Post-it sticky notes. The notes pointing up on the banister required Christian's attention. When Christian wrote replies, he would point them down.