NEED TO KNOW
Christian Bale lets his inner monster out in his new film.
The Bride!, from director Maggie Gyllenhaal, stars Bale, 52, as the back-from-the-dead creature commonly known as Frankenstein’s monster from Mary Shelley’s classic horror novel. Jessie Buckley stars as his titular partner in the stylized and reimagined tale, in theaters March 6.
“I would scream like crazy, every day,” Bale told Entertainment Weekly in a new cover story. Because it took six hours in the makeup chair to transform into “Frank,” as the character dubs himself, the Oscar winner came up with a ritual to get in the zone and keep himself “from going insane.”
courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
“Just to [release the] despair, all of that restraint that you have to display when you’re sitting still for that long,” the English star said of the tradition — which extended to a “great bonding experience” with his collaborators in the makeup trailer and beyond.
“I didn’t want to do it driving into work because I thought I might cause a crash. And I didn’t want to do it by myself because I thought everyone would just think I’m going nuts,” admitted Bale. “The whole crew got involved by the end, because people would hear us screaming.”
courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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Soon, the set of The Bride! became a place for unleashing inner monsters. “A few people were going, ‘Can we do it too?’” recalled Bale. “And then by the end, there were like 30 people who would hear us and run to the makeup trailer to be a part of it and scream as well.”
Buckley, 36, said she and Bale “were both intense” as their undead Bonnie and Clyde-like pair. “We both were two greyhounds that were just let out of their kennels, and it was really, really thrilling,” said the Hamnet star. “It was really probably the most intense, exhausting shoot of my life, but it was so fun.”
Gyllenhaal’s fantastical movie costars her husband Peter Sarsgaard and brother Jake Gyllenhaal, plus Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, Julianne Hough and more. The writer-director acknowledged to EW that The Bride! follows filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s recent, Oscar-nominated take on Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein, which also featured an extensive makeup transformation for star Jacob Elordi.
“How cool that Guillermo del Toro and I just randomly, at the same moment, are thinking about somewhat similar things? And, as it turns out, in extremely different ways,” said Gyllenhaal, 48.
The Bride! is in theaters March 6. Among Bale’s other upcoming projects is biopic Madden with Nicolas Cage.
