Movies

Christian Bale on David O. Russell, Amy Adams American Hustle Set Experience – The Hollywood Reporter

October 5, 2022

Christian Bale addresses his pay and conduct in two of his most notable films: American psycho and american hustle.

The amsterdam and Thor: Love and Thunder the actor spoke to QG for the magazine’s November cover story, where he spoke about a decade-long philanthropic effort, his tenuous social relationship with Hollywood, his American psycho director David O. Russell’s salary and defending co-star Amy Adams on the set of american hustle.

While discussing the american hustle define the experience, stories of which emerged amid Sony’s email hack in 2014 and March 2016 British GQ interview with Adams, Bale confirms he came between Adams and Russell, calling himself a “mediator” during those interactions and saying he “did what I thought was appropriate, in a very Irv style”, referring to his character in the film.

“If I can figure out where it’s coming from, then I tend to try to be a mediator. It’s just in my nature, to try to say, ‘Hey, come on, let’s go and sit down and figure this out. There has to be a way to make this all work,” Bale told the magazine.

During the 2016 interview about his on-set experience, Adams answered a question prompted by an email stemming from the Sony leak between journalist Jonathan Alter and his brother-in-law, then Sony CEO Michael Lynton. . Alter wrote that the american hustle the director “abused” the actress on set so much that Bale intervened on her behalf. “His abuse and insane behavior is extreme, even by Hollywood standards,” Alter wrote.

The actress said British GQ that Russell “was tough on me, that’s for sure”, describing the experience as “a lot” and which not only brought her to tears, but also saw her come home from work “devastated” “most days” . It was an experience, at the time, that made her lose interest in working with him again “in the near future” and probably not “unless the role was less damaged and there was a way to mitigate madness” after that.

“Even I was surprised american hustlebecause on [his previous film] Silver Linings Playbook he had developed this wild and crazy way of working with Bradley [Cooper] and Jennifer [Lawrence] …and it was mania. I was like: wow,” Adams said. “It really taught me to separate work and home. Because I was like, I can’t bring this experience home with my daughter.

Bale says having to step in and mediate this work didn’t make him feel any differently about the finished project and that Adams herself told him not to let it affect the enjoyment of watching.

“You’re dealing with two amazing talents there,” Bale says. “Listen, if I feel like we’ve gotten closer – and you never get anywhere close to accomplishment; our imaginations are too amazing to achieve this entirely – but if you get close to it, and when you work with people with the crazy creative talent of Amy or David, there will be upheaval. But they are fucking phenomenal. Also, you have to remember that that was also the nature of the characters. Right? These characters weren’t people who backed down from anything, were they?

Elsewhere in the interview, Bale talks about one of his early films, American psycho, which is often considered the film that launched his career. But the pale blue eye The star says it was a role that only the director, Mary Harron, wanted – and fought for – for him to be.

And so the pay was low — “the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me,” Bale says, with the promise that “they would only do it if they could pay me that amount” — for a job that he took to support his family.

“I had a house that I shared with my dad and my sister that was being repossessed. So the first thing was, ‘Holy shit. I need to earn some money, because I have American psycho I did, but I remember one time sitting in the makeup trailer and the makeup artists laughing at me because I was paid less than any of them. And so that was my motivation after that. Was just, ‘I gotta have enough so the house won’t be repossessed.'”

Because his relationship with acting has been tied to gaining financial security for his family from a young age, the actor says taking time off wasn’t something he really considered. .

“That’s how I’ve been supporting people since I was 12, 13. So it was always there, that element,” Bale says. “There was never a time when it was like, ‘I think I’d like to take four years off.’ No. It’s not going to happen. It’s not possible.”