Does Tom Cruise have psycho eyes? Christian Bale says yes
October 22, 2009 by Jane Boursaw
When Christian Bale was creating the character of homicidal Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho,” you might think he’d have studied Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, some real psychos.
But no, it was Tom Cruise that Bale looked to for inspiration. According to director Mary Herron, Bale based his character on Cruise’s “intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.”
Hmmm … I wonder what that says about Tom Cruise. That he’s really a psycho inside? That his maniacal laugh comes from a deep-seated psychosis involving aliens and spirit guides?
In an interview with BlackBook, Herron talked about how she and Bale created the delusional Bateman. “We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave.”
She added, “And then one day he [Bale] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”
“American Psycho” stars Bale as a wealthy New York investment banking executive who hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends. Buy it on Amazon.
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