“The Fighter” features one of Christian Bale’s best performances to date, an uncanny portrayal of real-life boxer Dicky Eklund. Dicky had an instant in the spotlight after being the first to knock down Sugar Ray Leonard, and a long period in the shadows battling drug addiction.
Bale, 36, dropped from 180 pounds to 137, thinned his hair and adopted a vowel-flattening “Baaston” accent to play the ravaged welterweight, but the real power of his performance is its emotional punch. His work is generating huge Oscar buzz. In a recent phone interview, he discussed the role and his lifelong acting career.
The Welsh actor made his screen breakthrough at 12 in Steven Spielberg’s dark WWII epic “Empire of the Sun” as a British schoolboy separated from his parents during the Japanese occupation of China. After forgettable juvenile roles came a series of period costume dramas that seemed to type Bale as another vanilla Brit fated to play a series of fancy-dressed gents.
“I was stuck in it, thinking, ‘What the hell’s happening here?’ I don’t mind those movies, but you want a bit of variety in life, you know? But there’s a limited amount of power that you have when you can barely get them to put you in a movie. Saying, ‘This is the kind of movie I want to make’ is like shouting into the Grand Canyon. Who cares?”
That’s why Bale leapt at the chance to play the murderous yuppie in “American Psycho.” The bloody, controversial film, released in 2000, established Bale as a daring actor willing to risk despicability.
In the first of many dramatic physical transformations, Bale built his body up to the Olympian proportions of the narcissistic antihero.
“I fought tooth and nail to do it,” he said. “Otherwise, I saw a career of frilly shirts and croquet on lawns.”
Director David O. Russell’s decision to shoot “The Fighter” on location in blue-collar Lowell, Mass., appealed to Bale. “We were hanging around the place for a couple of days before work began. Dicky was taking me around to the actual bars and crack houses he lived in, the gyms where he trained, street corners he hung out on, places he got arrested.”
Dicky’s loony extroversion is a complete break from the moody, interior parts that have been Bale’s specialty. He got wired on caffeine to mimic the man’s speed-freak jabber, “crackin’ jokes and talking all day on the set. Thank God the schedule wasn’t too long, so I could keep it up.
“I’ve played many quiet roles,” Bale said, “and they’re always the trickier roles to play. You’re so much at the mercy of the editor and director actually noticing what you’re doing because it’s so quiet and subtle and there’s so much distraction on a movie set.”
In this film, the quiet part goes to Mark Wahlberg, playing Dicky’s half brother, Micky Ward, an aspiring fighter who is both mentored and sabotaged by his irresponsible older sibling.
“Boxing is the movie’s backdrop, but it’s all about loyalty and love and how do you live with the people you love when the relationships have become unhealthy,” Bale said.
It’s also about a community’s pride and problems. On his walking tours of Lowell with Dicky, Bale saw the townspeople’s unquestioning affection for their black sheep hero.
“We were going in and out of barber shops, chatting. ‘Dicky’ this, ‘Dicky’ that. He’s shadowboxing with people. He’s making business deals with people. It’s hilarious. Forget ‘Hey, Batman,’ it’s ‘Hey, Dicky.’”
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