The Fighter's Christian Bale doesn't pull his punches

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      LOS ANGELES—You can’t stereotype Christian Bale. He has too many moves. The former child actor could have ended up spending most of his career playing variations of the title character from his adult lead debut, American Psycho. Instead, he has moved easily from villains to antiheroes and, ultimately, to the hero role in one of the most popular franchises of all time, the modern Batman series.

      After The Dark Knight made more than a billion dollars in international box-office sales, Bale was looking for something that would take him in a new direction. He found it during a conversation in the parking lot of his child’s daycare centre. Another dad, Mark Wahlberg, told him about a movie he was planning to produce called The Fighter, which would tell the true story of Boston boxer Micky Ward and his relationship with his brother, troubled ex-fighter Dicky Eklund. In an L.A. interview room, Bale says that if it seems he stepped close to the edge of sanity at times during his portrayal of Dicky, it’s because he was working closely with a real-life person who was flirting with disaster.

      “There were a couple of times that we had to physically restrain Dicky from landing a punch on David [director David O. Russell],” Bale says. “We had some initial interesting times when we were rehearsing. We were at Mark’s house, where Mark actually put up Dicky and Micky. There were some script changes going on and Dicky wasn’t totally understanding that when you are putting a whole life into two hours, a little bit of licence has to be taken and you have to mix things up. Initially, he wanted everything to be portrayed the way it happened, and there were a couple of times he said, ”˜Let’s have a go,’ which is a serious thing coming from a pro boxer. He and I would talk, and David would talk to him, and I think David might have stopped him from laying one on me. But it was an interesting time and he eventually came around, and after we showed him the movie he didn’t punch any of us. I talked to him almost daily. I think that is a great achievement: to make a story of someone’s life and have them feel comfortable with it.”


      Watch the trailer for The Fighter.

      In the film, Dicky, who became “the Pride of Lowell (Massachusetts)” at age 20 after knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, works closely with Micky on his training but disappears for days at a time to smoke crack cocaine. Their mother (Melissa Leo), who doubles as Micky’s manager, has to hunt him down before every fight. A local bartender (Amy Adams) convinces Micky to leave his mother and brother in order to forge a new career. However, Dicky is still the corner man who knows him best, and despite his addiction, they unite to see if they can take Micky to a championship. (The movie opens on Friday [December 17].)

      Wahlberg—who plays Micky in the film—knew that if the movie was going to be made, he had to find someone who could lose himself in the role of Dicky. He says that once he’d convinced Bale to train with him, he knew he had a man who wouldn’t be afraid of the commitment it would take to get the part right. “He was the guy who is not scared to play the part. Everyone else wanted to do it, but they weren’t committed to going where you had to go to do it. I had seen Christian in The Machinist and Rescue Dawn and saw how good he could be when he responds to the material. I thought, ”˜This is the best chance for us to make the best movie.’ He is a fearless actor and he responded immediately, and that was what got the momentum to get the film made. Everything else fell into place soon after that.”

      Bale says he made the movie because he felt that despite Dicky’s failures—personal and professional—he provided inspiration to his brother and his entire family, which included seven other siblings and his mother. “I think that he became a source of confusion for his younger brother, but it is an immensely loyal family and they are very loyal brothers. I also think that Dicky had a lot of pressure from his family because he had such great success at such a young age. The family felt that through his success the whole family had success, and I think that was a part of why he was drawn into this self-destruction until he was able to say, ”˜It’s no longer my time; it’s Micky’s time.’ I don’t think this movie would exist without the relationship between the two brothers.”

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