BATMAN BEGINS

It happened the very first time Christian Bale slipped on the Bat Suit. "It’s hard to explain, but as soon as you put it on you feel like there aren’t any choices after that. You feel that you have to give it everything."

The 31-year-old actor is well aware of the iconographic status of the character of Batman, of course, and the artistic challenge that represents. "Who isn’t? But I was too excited about getting the part to be nervous about it. I just wanted to give it my best shot."

Batman Begins will explore the very origins of the Batman legend rather than rely on the more recent imagery from the four previous, very successful Batman movies. In other words, says Bale, critically-acclaimed director Christopher Nolan has his own unique filmmaker’s take on the Caped Crusader.

Bale faced a daunting challenge to prepare for the role. As Nolan screen tested several actors, Bale was at the very top of his wish list, but he also knew that the actor was just finishing The Machinist, a role which required him to dramatically lose weight–at one point, dropping some 60 pounds to become an emaciated 121 pounds.

"Obviously Chris wanted me to put as much weight back on as fast as I could," says Bale. "And I had about six weeks before the screen test and I just gorged myself–I ate the lot. You name it, I ate it. It’s not the healthiest way to do it, that’s for sure, but I did put a lot of the weight back on."

By the time filming started in March 2004, Bale was back to his normal, impressive self, weighing around 180lbs. At 6-foot-2 (the exact same height as the comic books described Batman, by the way), he certainly cuts an imposing figure in that Bat Suit.

He needed to be in peak condition for the gruelling, but exhilarating, six months of filming which took the production from Iceland to a former airship hangar–now known as Cardington Studios near Watford, England, where a massive Gotham City set was built–to Chicago, before the production finished in September 2004.

"It’s been amazing," says Bale, in an on-set interview almost three quarters of the way through the schedule. "We started off with a scene between myself and Liam Neeson on a genuinely frozen lake in Iceland which as we were rolling about on it was cracking. It was a great suggestion of what making this movie was going to be.

"By the afternoon the whole thing was thawing out and becoming very dangerous to be there and by the next day we couldn’t have filmed there at all. An incredible experience."

Bale did much of his own stunt work, learning a new martial arts discipline, Keyce Fighting Method (KFM) which is used in the film.

"Christian has been great to work with," says stunt coordinator Paul Jennings. "He actually learns so quickly, it’s frightening. You show him a tape of say, a 50-move fight, talk him through it and he will come in the next day and he’s got it. It’s a bit scary because it takes the stunt men a bit longer! And he’s keen to do everything and in fact he did do all of the set piece fights in the film."

Bale is one of the most versatile and talented actors working today. He first won acclaim as a 13-year-old when he starred in Steven Spielberg’s epic Empire of the Sun, playing Jim Graham, a young lad caught and imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II.

Some of the many highlights of his career include starring opposite Winona Ryder in Little Women (1994), alongside Ewan McGregor in the rock movie Velvet Goldmine (1998), working as one of a glittering ensemble cast in Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), a tour-de-force performance in American Psycho (2000), playing the disgruntled son of an aging rock rebel in Laurel Canyon (2002) and more recently, in the aforementioned The Machinist.

Bale is the youngest of four children and was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales. He lives in California with his wife of four years, Sibi Blazic.

Q: It’s a very iconic role, were you nervous taking it on?

BALE: No, I was too excited about it to be nervously excited about it (laughs). You know, I had a few people point out to me just how dedicated and obsessed many people are with this character but I think the way that Chris wanted to make it was very much "let’s re-invent it" so there wasn’t any kind of pressure for me to feel like I was continuing something, just that I could invent whatever I felt was right for it. So I’ve been more excited about it than nervous.

Q: Were you very familiar with the Batman story and characters in it?

Bale: Well, as a kid I didn’t really read comic books. I actually didn’t get interested in Batman, although I had seen the TV series, until about four or five years ago when somebody gave me Batman Year One, the graphic novel and I had just never seen it in that way before and then after that, I read different ones, The Long Halloween and Dark Victory and I just loved the look of them.

Q: So how will it be re-invented?

Bale: Because we literally are going back to the beginning and answering the question that I guess has never been answered and that is, "Why does a guy dress up like a bat and run around the city and try and fight crime?" It is a very bizarre thing for anybody to do so it is literally re-inventing it right from the beginning. I don’t quite know how to explain it except to say that it takes it seriously. I don’t mean to sound like an idiot, talking about taking Batman seriously, but to me, the way that the story and the character is most enjoyable is if I really do manage, as a viewer, to immerse myself in it and make some move towards really believing in it.

Whereas if you kind of take a tongue-in-cheek approach, then you are never going to really believe in the story. To me, it’s kind of like modern day mythology and of course it’s fantastical and should be –and we shouldn’t take away from any of that fantasy–but I’m gong to end up enjoying the fantasy more if, for instance, when you see Bruce Wayne you really believe in who he is and you create somebody who isn’t just a two-dimensional alter-ego. And that creates a certain grittiness and a darkness as well to Batman.

Q: It’s interesting to get the chance to play two very different personalities in one film.

Bale: Yes, I think you can in some ways look at the Batman figure and ask, "is the guy schizophrenic?" or something. And I’m not playing him that way at all. He is certainly somebody with a lot of problems, a lot of issues, but instead of playing him as schizophrenic, I’m playing him as being very well aware of his own need to create this persona, to channel all his rage so that he is able to have a life away from the pain that he feels every day after what happened to his parents.

Q: There must be certain moments that stand out in your career as an actor and I would have thought that putting the Bat Suit on the first time or sitting in the Batmobile for the first time must have been one of those moments. What was it like?

Bale: Very hot (laughs). But I did find that I had ideas about how I wanted to play Batman but once I put on the suit, I didn’t feel like there were any choices after that, you just feel a certain way. When you put on that suit you have to give all or nothing because you are not human any more.

Q: Every super hero has a weak spot, what is Batman’s?

Bale: With Batman, his weak spots are his strong points as well. The reason that we know anything about him is because he has managed to maintain the clarity of mind he had at those moments during his parents’ death to make him continue to try and right that throughout his life, but it also means he has sacrificed much of his own personal life. I think the other weak point is that he actually enjoys what he does and that kind of scares him. When he is beating the crap out of somebody and breaking bones he has to remind himself possibly not to take it too far and not to become like the criminals he despises.

"Batman Begins" opens in Metro Mnila theaters on June 15.