American Psycho, directed by Mary Harron, is one of those classic movies that seems to never get old, which is really exceptional considering it came out 22 years ago. Christian Bale‘s performance as Patrick Bateman created one of the most memorable characters in cinema and cemented Bale as one of our best actors.
In a movie full of weird idiosyncrasies, there’s one aspect of Bateman that really adds to Bale’s performance – his persistent sweating. There’s an urban legend about Bale and how he could sweat on command on camera, willing little moisture beads to appear on his forehead.
That’s incredibly impressive if true, but the truth is somewhere in-between the legend and a confession from Bale. In an interview with Inverse, Bateman explained that he modeled his approach to Bateman after the source material.
American Psycho, the acclaimed novel by Bret Easton Ellis, came out in 1991. Bale said he studied the book carefully to try and get the character right.
“I didn’t plan on doing that. Bret Easton Ellis actually described it in this scene as his breathing sort of getting stopped. And so in doing that, I just found that beads of sweat kept breaking out on my forehead. But that wasn’t actually planned. It was just a result of what I was doing with my breathing.”
OK anyone else think he’s being a little modest here? Most of us hold our breath without our magical acting talents just going to work for us. Pretty cool honestly.
If you’ve never seen American Psycho do yourself a favor and take a gander, as it’s currently streaming on several major platforms.