Christian Bale talks Exodus and giving up Batman: Is he “the biggest idiot ever”?

CHRISTIAN Bale could have made lots of money cashing in on Batman. Now he reveals why he gave up the caped crusader’s role and how it led to a better future on screen.

Neala Johnson Movie reporterMovie reporter

7 min read

December 3, 2014 - 9:00PM

News Corp Australia Network

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CHRISTIAN Bale never wanted a security blanket.

That the British actor’s box-office busting run as Batman gave him just that was a bonus — “During that time I was starting a family, so that was very nice to have” — but not something he was afraid to throw away.

“I enjoy not knowing what’s coming,” says Bale, whose three films as the Caped Crusader ended with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. “I feel good that we left at that time; we could have hung in there for the cash because that was when the contracts were up and you could really start to leverage.

“Any business man would have just smacked me around the head and said I’m the biggest idiot ever — that’s exactly when you go in for the kill! But it was the right thing to do.”

Post-Batman, Bale has been making the most of his freedom by spending time with his wife, Sibi Blazic, daughter and this year’s new addition, a son.

CHRISTIAN BALE: Jealous of Ben Affleck playing Batman

Caped crusader ... Batman secured Gotham City and Christian Bale’s career. Picture: Warner Bros

“Haven’t worked for almost a whole year. But lovin’ it,” says the 40-year-old Oscar-winner, who is bushy of beard and tail on this November day in Los Angeles.

“I love not working. When I work, all I wanna do it work. When I don’t work, I never want to work again.”

Dragging Bale out of such hibernation is no easy task, requiring “either a friend, a director I’ve worked with before” or “someone I know is a really good collaborator. That’s what really excites me to get cracking again”.

Ridley Scott was not a previous Bale collaborator or close friend, but did have past form with, let’s say, discerning leading men, from Russell Crowe to Harrison Ford.

Bale doesn’t believe he was on Scott’s radar — “I don’t imagine he was sitting around going, ‘Oh, really gotta work with Christian!’ ” — but does recall briefly meeting the director some years prior and suggesting they work together.

“I thought he’d forgotten. It was about four years later that he rolled up to the house and said, ‘Wanna play Moses?’ I went, ‘Aaaah ha ha haaaa!’ I thought maybe he meant like some modern retelling, some revisionist thing. He said, ‘No, swords and sandals’. I said, ‘Really? Beard?’ ‘Yep. The whole lot.’ ”

That masterful meeting of minds sowed the seeds for Exodus: Gods and Kings, the biblical epic that lands in cinemas today.

New role ... Bale with director Ridley Scott on the set of film Exodus: Gods and Kings. Picture: 20th Century Fox

Naturally, this isn’t your grandad’s Moses (read: It’s not Charlton Heston’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments). Bale’s take on the iconic prophet is a conflicted military man, raised like a brother to Ramses (Joel Edgerton) until the paranoid Pharaoh casts him out into the desert.

Years later he returns with a plague-slinging God on his side, to lead his people to freedom across the Red Sea.

Once Scott planted the idea, Bale’s first action was to watch Monty Python’s classic mickey-taking of Biblical films, Life of Brian, and Mel Brooks’ equally tongue-in-cheek History of the World: Part I.

“There’s a very fine line between Life of Brian and many very earnest Biblical films — they’re often hilarious, and they don’t mean to be,” Bale explains.

“It’s a very fine line that you have to tread with anything with this kind of gravitas and sense of the opera. Very easily — yeeeooop! — you could slip. Suddenly you’re not the Messiah, you’re a very naughty boy instead.”

There were, Bale says, moments on the Exodus set that verged on the brink of unintended hilarity.

“Sometimes that’s all you nail — you’ve got Life of Brian down. You have to stand back and go, ‘Let’s take a deep breath and figure out what’s wrong. Why am I finding this funny, when it’s the last thing I should be finding funny?’ ”

In love .... Bale and his wife Sibi Blazic walk the red carpet in London in February. Picture: Joel Ryan, AP

But the actor also did some serious digging into the Moses fable, from the basket down the river to the burning bush.

“It’s a far more fascinating story than I ever realised. Moses is such a complex, contradictory character. I felt like the Cecil B. DeMille film told the story with hindsight: this is a prophet, no question. But when you can’t connect the dots forward, you think, well how terrifying that must have been for a man who suddenly feels he’s talking to God?

“He actually tried not to take the job, initially; he said, ‘I’m not your man’. Until God got quite mad at him and said, ‘Look, I’m telling you you need to do it’. ‘Ugh, all right’.

“That’s the approach I wanted to take.”

Complex it may be, yet the role is a far less flamboyant one than that Edgerton gets to play with as Ramses.

“Less glam rock,” nods Bale. “I just don’t think I could have played that as well as Joel. Who could carry off that gold like he did? That eyeliner? He managed to do that as well as show all the arrogance and insecurities of this man trying desperately to hold on to power. On top of all his gold, he owned it.

“He’s very serious about what he does. He had to have gold everywhere. He insisted — weird — on wearing gold underwear. So he made the costume department make him a gold thong (G-string), which is bloody hilarious. But you know what, he was into the part, wasn’t he?”

Aussie star ... Joel Edgerton’s Ramses walks into battle with Bale’s Moses in Exodus: Gods and Kings. Picture: 20th Century Fox

Bale says all of this completely straight-faced. Only a muffled giggle gives any indication he’s joking. Probably.

So if Edgo was sporting gold under his skirt, what was going on under Bale’s Moses tunic?

“Well, I was hiding a great deal ... and not what you’re thinking! I was hiding a rotund belly that I was trying to lose from American Hustle.

“I was rather shaped like Santa Claus when I walked into Ridley’s office — I’d put on 40 pounds (18kg) and shaved my head down to the scalp with a razor. You could see the look on Rid’s face: ‘What a mistake I’ve made. How can I say this nicely, then recast?’

“So I was thankful the tunics were very forgiving.”

Not only forgiving, but much easier to go to the loo in than the Batman suit, right?

“No comparison,” Bale replies. “Yes, no assistance needed.”

Coincidentally, the only advice Bale claims to have given Ben Affleck before stepping into the Batsuit is to ensure said suit offers unassisted access for peeing.

While renowned — nay, infamous — for how seriously he sinks into film roles, Bale is capable of enjoying a good sword fight as much as the next man-child.

“You can never underestimate stupid fun,” he says. “Ultimately that’s what films are, in the most fantastic way and in the most profound way.

“But, yeah — get on a horse, charge with a sword in my hand, hack away at people, get on a chariot, be beaten up. That’s all wonderful stuff. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it or how old you are, you’re like eight years old again as soon as you put all that gear on.

“Line ’em up man, raaaaah!” he laughs, swinging his arm as if slaying dozens of imaginary foes from aboard his chariot. “There’s nothing better.”

> SEE Exodus: Gods and Kings - open Thursday

A young Christian Bale ... in a scene from 1987 film Empire of the Sun. Picture: Supplied

HANDLE WITH KID GLOVES

In Exodus: Gods and Kings, God speaks to Moses through a boy, played by 11-year-old Londoner Isaac Andrews.

Bale was 13 when he, too, starred in a blockbuster by a master director, Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

While he claims not to have seen himself in Isaac — “That would be extraordinarily self-absorbed, wouldn’t it?” he laughs — Bale does have a special empathy for child actors.

“What I would hope is that he wants to do it. And that if he wants to stop he can. The thing is, even at the lowest end, it’s still money that is much needed. And that’s far too young to be the breadwinner.

“If you feel beholden to do something, that starts to kill the love for it. Thankfully, I came through the other side after hating it for many years because I felt like I didn’t have a choice.

“I just look at kids and go, ‘All good?’ I try to make ’em understand it’s not the be all and end all. Just because you’re doing this, doesn’t mean life stops. There’s so much that is more interesting out there.”