In a recent interview with “American Psycho” director Mary Harron, she says that the inspiration for Christian Bale‘s Patrick Bateman was Tom Cruise.
Bateman, the fictitious serial killer who hides his psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends, descends into madness over the course of the film.
How did you and Christian Bale develop his character in American Psycho?
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.
Check out some of Tom Cruise’s more…ummm…interesting video clips below: