One of the world’s most talented and captivating performers is Christian Bale. From starring in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy and snagging memorable roles in films like The Machinist.
However, not everyone is aware that the actor was obliged to accept the minimum salary to fill the character of the psychopathic killer Patrick Bateman since Leonardo DiCaprio refused to play him. Speaking with the GQ, he said:
Nobody wanted me to do that except the director. So they said they would only choose me if they could pay me the minimum wage. I was getting ready while other people auditioned for the part. I was still getting ready. I lost my mind. But in the end, I got it.
Christian Bale admitted that he received “the very minimum” pay for the role and that the makeup artists for the movie made more money than he did.
In honesty, the first thing was that I’d taken so long trying to do it, and they had paid me the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me. And I had a house that I was sharing with my dad and my sister, which was repossessed.
So the first thing was, ‘Holy crap. I’ve got to get a bit of money because I’ve got ‘American Psycho’ done, but I remember sitting in the makeup trailer, and the makeup artists were laughing at me because I was getting paid less than any of them. And so my motivation after that was: ‘I got to get enough that the house doesn’t get repossessed.'”
Bale also said that everyone on the American Psycho set believed he was a terrible actor.
He told me that all the actors in American Psycho thought at the time that I was a lousy actor, wondering why Mary Harron had chosen me! Fortunately, only after seeing the film did they change their minds.
Another intriguing statement made by Bale was that Leonardo DiCaprio was primarily responsible for the success of many celebrities who rose to fame in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Bale thinks DiCaprio receives the first choice for all significant jobs because of his extraordinary skill, while other people only have a chance because he turned them down.
