Patrick Bateman is one creepy guy, even for a cinematic killer there is still something extra unsettling about the axe-wielding business executive who Christian Bale brought to vapid life in AMERICAN PSYCHO.

During a recent interview, AMERICAN PSYCHO director Mary Harron revealed that another actor was a major inspiration for Bale with the role of Bateman. That actor is Tom Cruise, and it’s really not hard to see the influence once you think about it. Both Bateman and Cruise have this weird air about them, like they are only acting a certain way because they know their supposed to, but they just don’t seem quite right. And, in Bateman’s case, you know he’s not.

Here is exactly what Harron said when asked about how she and Bale developed the character:

“It was definitely a process. We talked a lot, but he was in L.A. and I was in New York. We didn’t actually meet in person a lot, just talked on the phone. 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. And then one day he 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.”

It’s a good thing that Bale happened to be watching Letterman that night, because the Cruise inspiration worked very well for Bale, as his performance of Bateman is still one of his most memorable.

Source Black Book (via Joblo)

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