Christian Bale as a slacker? That simply doesn’t sit proper.

The British actor is famed for his exacting transformations, spending months inhabiting his characters. He dropped 62lbs to play an insomniac in The Machinist and endured the same weight reduction for his drug addict ex-boxer in The Fighter, the movie that gained him an Oscar. On American Psycho, he obtained his enamel capped to play Wall Avenue maniac Patrick Bateman, whereas Vice noticed him gorge on pies to turn out to be former US vice chairman, Dick Cheney. However when he’s not working, it’s a special matter.

“In between, I’m a sloth,” says the 48-year-old after we meet in London’s Corinthia Lodge. “And I don’t wish to work that a lot if I can keep away from it.” As a rule of thumb, he solely takes one film a 12 months. However 2022 has been completely different. He made his bow within the Marvel universe, starring because the tragic villain Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder. He sang with Taylor Swift within the all-star flop Amsterdam. And now he’s the lead in Netflix-backed, Edgar Allan Poe-inspired, interval detective yarn The Pale Blue Eye.

“I do really feel like having finished three movies, everybody wants a little bit of time away from me,” he says, wincing on the considered how seen he’s proper now. “It’s an fascinating factor. I’ve many associates who’re completely obsessed. And I wish to get obsessed, I actually do. However I don’t simply get obsessed about movies. I’ve associates… they might love to only be on a movie set their complete life. Whereas for me, I actually wish to get away from them.”

Bale’s telephone goes off – it’s his younger son, Rex, calling. He’d a lot slightly be speaking to him than me, although he’s too well mannered to say so. This 12 months, he’s been doing an excessive amount of yakking to the press for his liking. Committing to all three tasks – which all obtained bunched up as a result of pandemic – has clearly eaten into his useful time at residence with spouse, Sibi, and youngsters Emmeline, 17, and Joseph (aka Rex) whom he sweetly nicknames “Banana” and “Burrito”.  

In The Pale Blue Eye, Bale performs Augustus Landor, a detective employed to analyze a grisly homicide at West Level, the famed US army academy. “I’ve at all times actually appreciated these 1830s, darkish, atmospheric, pre-electricity crime thriller items,” he says. Based mostly on the guide by Louis Bayard, the story sees the fictional Landor meet the younger Poe (Harry Melling), who famously attended West Level earlier than he grew to become the influential author of such Gothic classics as The Raven and The Fall of the Home of Usher.

With Landor traumatised by private loss, “the character I play is like one of many authentic hard-boiled detectives”, Bale notes. That includes an eccentric British assist solid – Toby Jones, Timothy Spall and Gillian Anderson all pop up – it’s additionally an uncommon try to attract the character of Poe right into a thriller that feels precisely like one he would’ve written. “It’s an interesting have a look at how Poe grew to become the Poe that everybody got here to know: the godfather of detective fiction and the macabre.”

The story additionally triggered one thing in Bale, kindling reminiscences of his childhood. Born in Wales, to Jenny (a circus performer) and David (a industrial pilot), he grew up in Bournemouth, after spells in Portugal and Oxfordshire. As a child, Bale gorged on Hammer Horror motion pictures. “I loved scaring myself,” he grins. “Regardless that it’s not precisely what we had been going for, there was one thing very Hammer Home [of Horror] about it, one thing somewhat bit armchair thriller.”

Would he have finished a Hammer film if he was performing within the 60s, the height of the model’s recognition? “I’d like to have finished.” He did get to work with Christopher Lee on a 1990 model of Treasure Island, wherein the veteran actor performed Blind Pew. “I’d grown up watching him as Dracula. Simply being at all times the creepy dude. For me, it was Christopher Lee and Vincent Worth. So it was incredible to get to work with him.”

He was 15 then and had already starred in Steven Spielberg’s Second World Conflict drama Empire of the Solar, and, on stage, alongside Rowan Atkinson, in The Nerd. “I didn’t actually prepare. I did a few weekends on the YMCA. That was my coaching – watching different actors truly doing it.” Atkinson’s affect was immense. Identical goes for Lee and garrulous co-star Oliver Reed on Treasure Island. And in 1992’s Newsies, he set to work with Robert Duvall, “one of many most interesting actors round”, who seems briefly in The Pale Blue Eye.

However the fame introduced on by Spielberg’s movie didn’t sit simply with him – the media consideration was an excessive amount of to bear. Youngsters in school taunted him, and he notoriously skipped out of the press junket in Paris, heading down the Champs–Élysées, after spending a lot of the afternoon giving uncooperative interviews. Right now, wearing navy casuals, he’s something however monosyllabic. The voice could also be quiet, a whispering growl just like the one he perfected enjoying Batman for Christopher Nolan, nevertheless it’s punctuated by roars of laughter.

Clearly, these early years shaped a blueprint. He’s an actor, not a celeb. Neglect events and premieres, he’d slightly be at residence repairing blown fuses or sump pumps. “I do take pleasure in doing all that stuff,” he says. “I assume it’s as a result of… while you do a job, the very first thing you do, you go to work and also you go to make-up and hair. Proper? Then in between time, you simply need to f**king seem like a very lazy, neglectful one that doesn’t give a s**t about [appearance]… however who truly can sort things. It’s good to have the ability to do this, proper?”

These previous few years, Bale has fused his want for practicality with creativity, stepping behind the digital camera. He’s credited as a producer on The Pale Blue Eye and Nineteen Thirties-set romantic journey Amsterdam, which he helped develop with writer-director David O Russell. Regardless of its astounding A-Listing solid – together with Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Margot Robbie, and Taylor Swift – the movie underperformed, taking simply $31m when it got here out. “I believe it’s truly an actual gem of a movie,” he counters. “I do preserve that [it] might be found, hopefully, for years to come back, quietly in individuals’s residing rooms.”

In the event that they do, they’ll discover one scene with Bale singing alongside Swift. When his daughter found this, she was bowled over. “I believe she simply felt sorry for Taylor. That was actually what it was. It was much less type of, ‘No means!’ It was extra, ‘Why?’ As a result of she hears me singing. I wish to sing lots. So she is aware of I’m not an excellent singer. I prefer it, however my enthusiasm is far larger than my capability. And I realised that when David requested me to close up and simply let Taylor sing… instantly you go, ‘Oh, yeah, she actually is aware of what she’s doing, don’t she?’”

Maybe he may come on stage at certainly one of her concert events, I counsel, for a visitor spot. “All of us have these desires!” he replies. Nonetheless, Bale has performed musicians earlier than – notably Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, when he was the singer in his Christian period and sang “Urgent On”. “I like that tune. And I obtained to carry out that and that’s addictive. It’s one thing else. I used to be performing in entrance of 20 individuals in some group corridor someplace, nevertheless it doesn’t matter. You’re like, ‘Oh, woah!’ What an dependancy!”

Is there any singer he’s obtained his coronary heart set on enjoying? “I assume simply rising up within the period that I did, it might at all times be fairly fascinating to play Shaun Ryder. He was nice. Man, I keep in mind, I’ve seen him a bunch of occasions, and he would simply cease the live performance and get it fallacious. And he didn’t give a crap!” 

It’s a stunning thought, Bale enjoying the lead singer of the Glad Mondays. Possibly he may direct it, too – he’s but to dip his ft into directing. He’s “not sure” he needs to, he says.

“I type of like being in cahoots with the director, forward of filming, after which when you begin filming, I get to enter my bubble of enjoying the function. I don’t know the way I’d multitask. I don’t prefer it that a lot.” What about simply directing and never performing? “That’s an choice,” he ponders. “I’m simply undecided that anybody would let me.”

The Pale Blue Eye is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 6 January