Chloë Sevigny has revealed that she felt “really intimidated” by Christian Bale during the shooting of American Psycho.
In Mary Harron’s 2000 film, Bale plays Patrick Bateman, a New York City investment banker who leads a double life as a psychopathic serial killer. Sevigny stars alongside Bale in the film as Bateman’s secretary Jean, with whom Bateman has an infatuation.
In a new interview for Vanity Fair, Sevigny spoke with fellow American Psycho alum Josh Lucas about the process of shooting the film, and about working alongside Bale in particular.
Sevigny said she tried to “respect [Bale’s] process” but found it “challenging because I’m very gregarious and silly and goofy, unbeknownst to the general public.”
“When people take themselves so seriously, I kind of shut down, even though I take my work very seriously and I love acting and whatnot,” she continued. “I was really intimidated by his process and intimidated by him, and I wanted a little more generosity to make myself feel more at ease, which is my own ego.”
“It was a really challenging dynamic for me, but I don’t think that I thought he was bad,” she added. “I was just kind of confused, like, ‘Why aren’t you being social?’ I wasn’t even that aware of what the Method thing was. I never had any formal training; I think I was just kind of ‘fake it until you make it.’ But the whole Method thing, I was like, What even is this approach? It was very intimidating.”
She also said that she found Bale’s process especially surprising given that he had started as a child actor.
“It’s not like he studied in college and then became this Method-y, Brando-y kind of thing,” she explained. “He found this journey from being a child actor to then an adult actor that I think is a really interesting trajectory, and I’m curious about that.”
In other Bale news, he is set to star as Frankenstein’s Monster alongside Jessie Buckley in director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s upcoming movie The Bride.
Gyllenhaal, for whom this will be her second directorial outing after 2021’s The Lost Daughter, shared the first images from the set on Instagram following a recent camera test for the Warner Bros. period film. See the images here.
The Bride takes place in 1930s Chicago and offers a spin on the iconic Frankenstein story. Buckley plays a murdered young woman who, after being revived, surprises her creators as she lusts for romance and ignites a radical social movement.
Starring opposite Bale and Buckley are Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard and Annette Bening. Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher is also on board.