How Christian Bale was Cast in American Psycho

Sometimes, a movie character is cast so perfectly that you can’t even fathom another actor playing the role. Cue Christian Bale in American Psycho, a career-launching breakout performance as Patrick Bateman, the greedy, materialistic Wall Street yuppie who moonlights as a murderous, stark-raving mad psycho killer while trying to preserve his public mask of sanity. Whether it’s all in his mind, Bale plays Bateman with such outward surety and inward insecurity, such brooding intensity and mordant comedy at once, that he keeps viewers guessing about Bateman’s sick, twisted, hyperviolent fantasies.

To think that director Mary Harron had to fight tooth and nail to cast Bateman in the role is preposterous to consider now, 25 years after the film was released. But again, even if Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt played Patrick Bateman, both of whom were attached to the role at one point, neither would likely strike the perfect balance of sidesplitting humor and head-splitting horror in the way Bale did in his first real starring movie role since Empire of the Sun. Indeed, Bale’s casting process in American Psycho is so fascinating that it’s only right, as the film celebrates its Silver Jubilee in 2025, to reflect on how the future Oscar-winning Welsh actor landed the role of a lifetime and what went into his performance as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho!

Despite the controversial nature of Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 source novel, Hollywood sought to adapt American Psycho as a feature film as early as 1992. At the time, Johnny Depp expressed interest in portraying Patrick Bateman, prompting producer Edward Pressman to purchase the rights to Ellis’s novel. Ellis was taken aback by Pressman’s unwavering commitment to adapting the book, and Pressman even met with Stuart Gordon to direct. Once Gordon was deemed the wrong fit, Depp left the project, and body-horror maestro David Cronenberg was soon attached to the adaptation.

When Cronenberg boarded the project, Ellis was hired to write the screenplay. At this time, Brad Pitt was slated to portray Patrick Bateman under Cronenberg’s direction, which is quite an intriguing prospect. However, Cronenberg stipulated that Ellis write a brief 65-70-page script at most, eliminate the graphic carnage, and delete all the restaurant and nightclub scenes, which Cronenberg cited as boring. Luckily, Ellis found Cronenberg’s demands “insane” and did not proceed to honor them.

Upon ignoring Cronenberg’s notes, Ellis wrote a screenplay draft that drastically veered from his novel. Ellis became restless after the three-to-four-year adaptation process and wrote a ridiculous ending where Patrick Bateman performs a musical number to Barry Manilow’s Daybreak atop the World Trade Center. The notion of Cronenberg directing Brad Pitt as Patrick Bateman in a song-and-dance ditty atop the Twin Towers is ludicrous to ponder now, then, or frankly, ever.

Cronenberg rejected Ellis’s draft and hired Norman Snider to draft a new version. Yet, Cronenberg hated Snider’s script more than Ellis’s. By January 1996, Mary Harron was asked to direct American Psycho, and she set her uncompromising sights on the unknown Welsh actor Christian Bale to play Patrick Bateman after director Todd Haynes claimed Bale was the best actor he’d ever worked with.

Before casting Bale, Harron hired Gwyn Turner, who plays Elizabeth in the film, to help rewrite Ellis’s script to emphasize the satirical social commentary about 80s excess. Once the screenplay was in shape, Billy Crudup was the first actor cast to play Bateman. Believe it or not, Crudup was attached to the role for six weeks before leaving on his own accord due to his aversion to the disturbing material and inability to find the character.

Years later, Bale and Harron maintain that the main reason they saw eye-to-eye on Bateman was their lack of interest in his backstory. Several actors who auditioned for the part kept droning on about Bateman’s abusive childhood and troubled upbringing. Yet, the actor-director duo couldn’t care less about Bateman’s psychotic past to explain his murderous motivations. For Bale, Bateman hardly registered as a real person, but rather as an alien monster from another world.

Once Crudup departed, Harron considered everyone from Ben Chaplin and Johnny Lee Miller to Robert Sean Leonard and Jonathan Schaech for the role. The producers pressed Harron to hire Edward Norton, but she refused and remained adamant about casting Christian Bale as her only choice.

Harron sent the script to Bale, who was working on Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. Despite never reading the novel, Bale fundamentally understood the dark humor and expressed so much interest in playing Bateman that he turned down every movie offer he received for the next nine months. Even as other actors and directors became attached to the project, Bale remained fully committed and adamant that the role was his. This proved invaluable when Bateman and Harron were temporarily removed from the project when Lionsgate demanded that Leonardo DiCaprio be cast as Bateman instead.

Indeed, once DiCaprio expressed interest in playing Bateman, Lionsgate told Harron they would make the Titanic actor an offer to star. Harron threatened to leave the project if DiCaprio was hired and refused to meet with DiCaprio out of fear that he would be so charming in person that she would cave in and change her mind. Harron cited the notorious miscasting of Demi Moore in The Scarlet Letter as a reason why DiCaprio looked too young and immature for the role. Lionsgate called Harron’s hand to see if she was bluffing, and she was not. Lionsgate fired Harron as the director and Bale as the lead actor, hired Oliver Stone to replace her, and offered DiCaprio the role.

Alas, DiCaprio’s asking price was $21 million, more than half of the movie’s then-purported $40 million production budget (Harron claims the budget stayed at $6 million when DiCaprio was attached). Lionsgate lost DiCaprio, who left over creative differences to make The Beach with Danny Boyle instead. DiCaprio has since downplayed his involvement, saying he may have been slightly interested in the American Psycho script but, in the end, realized the story lacked meaning and didn’t amount to much. Meanwhile, Bale thanked DiCaprio for passing not just on American Psycho, but basically every role he played in his career.

At some point, Keanu Reeves was offered to play Bateman. So, too, was Ewan McGregor, who declined the part after Bale called him up and personally asked him to do so.

While Stone ultimately departed the project due to budgetary disagreements, his idea was to cast DiCaprio as Bateman, James Woods as Detective Kimball, Cameron Diaz as Bateman’s fiancée Evelyn, and Chloe Sevigny as Bateman’s secretary, Jen, who ended up in the role anyway.

After DiCaprio and Stone left, Lionsgate rehired Harron to direct American Psycho. Although the budget was severely reduced to $7 million, Harron immediately cast Bale as Bateman again. Bale and Harron persuaded Winona Ryder to play Evelyn, but she declined despite working with Bale in Little Women.

In preparation to portray Patrick Bateman, Bale kept the book by his side every day of filming, pored over the novel’s pages, and deliberately kept to himself on the set to immerse himself in Bateman’s twisted psychology and get into the character’s dissociated headspace. At first, Bale struggled with the American accent due to his character’s Manchester dialect in Velvet Goldmine.

Bale also underwent a grueling training regimen to get into tip-top physical shape. He stuck to the same morning routine that Bateman articulates in the film, had elaborate dental work done before filming commenced, stuck to a rigorous workout schedule that included several hours at the gym and three hours of on-set training every day, and feasted on a primary diet of chicken breasts. Harron nicknamed Bale “Robo-Actor” on set after his costars noticed that he would break into a sweat at the exact moment during each take while filming the hilarious business card scene. The point is that Bale had complete control over his physical instrument while making American Psycho, and the results still hold up 25 years later.

Bale’s chiseled, 180-pound physique became so striking that Harron admitted that most female crew members stopped and watched the actor shower during Bateman’s morning ritual. Once he nailed Bateman’s speech patterns, Bale also kept his American accent in between takes and was so convincing that several crew members were stunned to hear his authentic British accent at the wrap party for the first time. Bale also improvised two memorable scenes in the movie, including Bateman’s campy, maniacal moonwalk after gorily axing Paul Allen to death in his living room, and the playful instance when Bateman begins skipping his jump rope across the room like a schoolgirl while working out.

Once landing the role, Bale was so intent on impressing Ellis that he organized a restaurant meeting with the author. Bale arrived in full business suit regalia and introduced himself as Patrick Bateman, replete with the yuppie American accent. Ellis was so unnerved that he pleaded with Bale to stop pretending to be Bateman after 10 minutes. To this day, Ellis maintains it was one of the most disturbing encounters in his life.

Beyond Ellis’s inspirational source material, Bale based his performance as Bateman on two actors: Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. While preparing to play the part, Bale happened on a random Tom Cruise interview on television with David Letterman. As Harron tells it, Bale witnessed Cruise’s “very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes,” and used that as a psychological entryway into the pathology of Bateman’s morbid mental state. Bale also kept pictures of Cruise and his megawatt smile in his trailer. The irony is that, in Ellis’s novel, Bateman lives in the same apartment complex as Tom Cruise. Bateman and Cruise even interact in the apartment’s elevator, with Bateman insulting Cruise’s 1988 movie Cocktail by calling it Bartender.

The other actor Bale patterned Bateman on was Nicolas Cage, particularly in Vampire’s Kiss. Cage plays Peter Loew, a solipsistic New York yuppie with the same shallow, self-absorbed materialism as Bateman. But beyond the character parallels, Bale was drawn to the risky nature of Cage’s performance.

Indeed, several people cautioned Bale to decline to play Patrick Bateman, calling it akin to career suicide to portray such an irredeemable serial killer. Feminist leader Gloria Steinem was one person who advised against the role of Bateman, urging Leonardo DiCaprio not to accept the part when he was still attached to the project. Steinman claimed DiCaprio’s young female fan base would turn on him if he played such a violent misogynist. Ironically, Steinman eventually became Christian Bale’s real-life stepmother after marrying his father, whom she was dating when Bale was cast as Bateman. Bale has since stated he did not agree to play Bateman as a cruel joke to irritate Steinem.

Rather than discouraging him, these warnings made Bale want to play Bateman even more. From Bateman to Batman, American Psycho proved anything but career suicide. On the contrary, the cult-classic catapulted Bale into the upper echelon of A-list Hollywood actors, a bankable leading franchise movie star, a chameleonic character actor, and a future Academy Award winner to boot.

Speaking of boots, Luca Guadagnino’s dubious reboot of American Psycho has Austin Butler rumored to play Patrick Bateman. Whether Butler can hold a candle to Bale’s luminous turn is a tall ask, but at least he has an all-time great performance and Ellis’s novel as a blueprint.

As the original American Psycho celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, it’s worth noting that Bale was asked to reprise Patrick Bateman in Rules of Attraction, the 2002 movie adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s novel, which follows Patrick’s brother, Sean Bateman. However, Bale declined. Regardless, Bale’s piercing performance as Patrick Bateman remains just as captivating as his casting process.

The post How Christian Bale was Cast in American Psycho appeared first on JoBlo.