Christian Bale has firmly planted his flag in staking his claim to being one of the best actors in modern history, if not all time. If there’s any actor that has continued the legacies of Paul Muni and Daniel Day-Lewis in being the living embodiments of true chameleons, it’s him. With one of the most one-of-a-kind metabolisms in human history that allows him to truly take on whatever shape he needs to, from the scrawny racer bod of Ken Miles in Ford v Ferrari to the bubble gut-bald combo of Dick Cheney in Vice, few actors have been as truly free as he has been in tapping into the potential of what’s inside him. He used that metabolism to get in arguably the best shape of his life to play Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, the role that officially made him a star and an actor everyone was going to take notice of. It wasn’t just his chiseled Adonis body and empty commercialized voice that made his performance a revelation, but also the behavioral tic he stole from an actually not-all-that-surprising source that helped him unlock who Bateman wound up being.
Who Is Patrick Bateman?
As Bateman says at the beginning of the film, there is an idea of who he is, but he is simply not there. While many have tried to argue that this is meant to be read on a deeper level as insight into a once-good man who’s been fully consumed by capitalism, the reality is that it’s probably far more literal than anyone thought. If you look across interviews with original book author Bret Easton Ellis and film co-writer and director Mary Harron, they attest that the book and subsequent film could only truly work when viewed as a dark satirical comedy skewering the fragility of the male ego in an ultra-capitalist society. With that logic in mind, it makes more sense to view Patrick Bateman as less a human being with traditional motivations and more like an alien trying and failing to mimic a human being. When Bateman tries to do “normal” things like talk about important issues to think about in the current world or describe why he loves his favorite music albums, his voice slips into the default state of an “as seen on TV” sales rep as dictated by a teleprompter.
So, with all that said, when Christian Bale took on this assignment and understood that he was playing a humanoid creature that can only simulate what it’s like to be truly human, who did he turn to for inspiration? Tom Cruise.
How Did Tom Cruise Inspire Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman?
Yes, Tom Cruise. The death-defying, cinema-saving icon himself. In a 2009 interview that Mary Harron gave to blackbookmag.com, she said that Bale once called her and said that he had a light bulb moment. In trying to nail how “Martian-like” Bateman was and how he was “watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave,” Bale stumbled upon an interview that Tom Cruise gave on the David Letterman show. Bale made note of how Cruise “just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.” She didn’t elaborate much beyond this, but it’s still a goldmine.
Cruise has garnered a lot of respect throughout the years, being consistently touted as both a supremely talented and versatile actor and one of the nicest, most magnetic people you could possibly be around. But that reputation has always been underlined with this unspoken acceptance that he seems… let’s just say “strange.” It’s too easy to pin this all on the couch-jumping incident and his “I am the last true movie star and I will fight for that title with my dying breath” energy, the way he throws himself into everything he does with too much energy is disconcerting. Remember the time he got water sprayed in his face at a red carpet event for War of the Worlds and mercilessly chewed the prankster out by constantly asking “Why’d you do that,” all while smiling the biggest smile he could possibly muster? Or how eager he is for us to see him jumping off the top of a mountain or dangling off of a plane in midair? Yes, it’s a little… strange.
Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman Both Want to Fit In
With this in mind, it makes the black humor of Patrick Bateman even funnier than it already was. You start to look more closely at it for Tom Cruise-shaped Easter eggs, seeing if Bateman does something that can create a direct link. (Though there could be some confirmation bias at work there.) The way Cruise talks on talk shows, especially when he’s going into sales rep mode, is most evident when Patrick goes on one of his signature speeches about the wonders of his mediocre taste in music. The Huey Lewis rant has been picked apart to death and is arguably the most manic of his outbursts, but the Cruise-ian element comes in how completely unfazed he is once he gets going. Paul Allen (Jared Leto) asking if he’s wearing a raincoat does absolutely nothing to stop Bateman from preaching the wonders of conformity, or capping him with an ax, for that matter. It calls to mind the way Cruise can hold an audience under his spell, be it when he’s convincing Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) to keep him as his agent in Jerry Maguire, or how he holds the attention of an entire audience of men’s rights activists when he’s lecturing them in Magnolia.
Outside his music monologuing, the other big thing about Bateman that fits Cruise’s sensibility is summarized in his assertion, “I want to fit in.” By all accounts, Cruise’s entire life has been devoted to making himself the biggest star in the world, and doing what it takes to maintain that position. At almost every turn, he made the right choice in shifting sets to satisfy what audiences wanted from him, from working with auteur directors like Tony Scott and Francis Ford Coppola in the ’80s to aligning himself with the Mission: Impossible franchise and stretching his dramatic acting muscles with films like Jerry Maguire and Magnolia in the ’90s to committing himself to be the biggest action star in the world in the 21st century. With some notable exceptions (we do not speak of Knight and Day), Cruise has consistently had a gift for fitting himself into what audiences would respond to at the moment and knew what not to put himself in for fear of tainting his stardom, and Patrick Bateman’s whole philosophy is fitting himself into whatever the culture around him tells him is cool.
These Tom Cruise Characters Are Similar to Patrick Bateman
Although Cruise has never given a performance quite like Bale’s in American Psycho, you can find Bateman-esque qualities in other roles in his career. In Collateral, he was a sociopath assassin who funneled his philosophy on life into cold murdering; in Magnolia, he was a charismatic public speaker masking a deep-seated insecurity over his relationship with his father; in Jerry Maguire, he was a powerful white-collar agent questioning his sense of what’s important in his life. While the individual performances bear little resemblance to Bale’s work, it shows that Cruise had an understanding of different facets of Bateman’s personality makeup, and those roles are among his best work. Cruise has the ability to imbue his characters with a sense of clear focus and intensity that can communicate an undertone of rumbling anxiety and wavering conviction, much like how Bale can communicate Bateman’s progressing crumbling of self.
Like Patrick Bateman, There’s More to Tom Cruise Than Meets the Eye
Patrick Bateman’s legacy has only grown in recent years, thanks in no small part to Christian Bale going on to have such an incredible career. The character has gone on to be analyzed, misrepresented, and become a symbol and poster boy for things he wasn’t supposed to. It feels like he has become somewhat divorced and distorted from the relatively straightforward consumerism satire from which he was born. In a similar vein, Tom Cruise’s career also feels as if it has evolved from what he once was. Long gone are the days of him as a cocky underdog with an unexpected empathetic undercurrent, and instead we have a man who constantly risks his life on-screen for our pleasure. As the behavioral layers gradually peeled away to uncover Bateman’s deep existential insecurity and narcissism, so too did the acting layers gradually peel away to reveal Tom Cruise’s film choices becoming more about giving the audience exactly what they want from him with an unparalleled dedication. It goes to show how far a killer work ethic and unbridled passion can take you. For better or for worse.
