Every actor who almost took the Patrick Bateman role
There aren’t many actors working today who can claim to transform themselves like Christian Bale has been able to. Throughout his career, Bale’s way of sculpting himself into an acting chameleon has been a wonder to watch onscreen, donning the cape and cowl when playing Batman and giving a sense of heightened drama to Dick Cheney in Vice. While Bale may have landed one of his first major dramatic roles working on American Psycho, he almost lost out on the role of Patrick Bateman to a handful of major players in Hollywood.
Then again, it would be difficult for anyone to bring Bateman’s signature charming menace to the big screen. Since he has to operate as a Wall Street tycoon by day, Bateman’s bait-and-switch persona into a cold-blooded killer requires a lot of skill, especially when turning off his empathy when executing his victims.
When working on the first auditions, though, Bale was far from the first in line to become the Wall Street killer. Among the many actors considered for the role was Billy Crudup, initially slated to play Bateman before dropping out because of the role’s demands. While Bale may have made a striking persona, the original vision for the role was to have a heartthrob for the character, with everyone from Brad Pitt to Leonardo DiCaprio in the running to play the killer.
Aside from Bale being kicked off the production, the initial ideas that the studio had were much different from what the film would become. Rather than playing up the black humour behind most of Bateman’s killings, one of the initial drafts was intended to end with a musical number on top of the World Trade Center.
While other potentials like Ben Affleck and Edward Norton slipped through the studio’s fingers, Bale was quietly at work planning how to play the character. Even though director Mary Harron had been involved in the first stab at the film, she began to think that Bale was committing himself too much to the gig before confirming the role.
When discussing his time developing himself to GQ, Bale began to see that even his friends thought he was losing the plot, saying, “I went a little psycho myself, saying ‘No, I’m still gonna make the film’. Even though other people were cast and other directors were on board, I kept prepping. All my friends were like, ‘What are you doing?’ And lo and behold, it came back it eventually came back, which felt like a great victory.”
Then again, Bale’s portrayal of Bateman also had some alternative reactions to what he sought. After getting the role and visiting Wall Street, Bale remembered getting amazing reactions from the various business tycoons he was talking to, with none of them understanding the severity of the role.
While actors like McGregor or DiCaprio may have been able to work with the premise they had, Bale’s innate of portraying Bateman is bone-chilling, almost like he’s some sort of subhuman species that’s slowly trying to figure out how standard human behaviour works. Even though any actor may have been able to add their unique spin to American Psycho, Bale was able to encapsulate the unhinged nature of Bateman with just a subtle change in his eyes.
Actors who nearly played Patrick Bateman:
- Brad Pitt
- Johnny Depp
- Billy Crudup
- Edward Norton
- Ewan McGregor
- Ben Affleck
- Matt Damon
- Vince Vaughan
- Leonardo DiCaprio