Bale first met with Nolan and Emma Thomas in April 2003, just as he was about to begin shooting The Machinist, a film for which he was rapidly losing weight in order to play a delusional skin-and-bones insomniac; he’d already lost about 60 pounds. “I came to the meeting late,” said Thomas, “and I didn’t even recognize Christian. At that point, he probably weighed about 140 pounds—and still had further to go. We spoke with him, and clearly he’s a special talent who takes things very seriously.”52 Bale was concerned about his gaunt appearance, so skin-and-bones that his spine was visible through his shirt, but Nolan took it in stride. “I remember Christian was worried because he was meeting to play a superhero,” said Nolan. “But I came away from it feeling I’d never seen such focus and dedication from an actor.”53
There were many actors who were interested in playing Batman, but Bale was the first one who met with Nolan. “We’d barely started writing the script when I met him,” said Nolan. “I called the studio right away and said, ‘You really should take a look at this guy because I think he’s a very strong contender.’ So I got in there early. It was very clear to me that he fitted the role.”54 Nonetheless, Nolan knew it would take some work to convince the studio that this was their new Batman. Nolan told Bale he’d have to make a screen test. Bale understood. “How the hell could I convince anybody, given the shape I was in?” he said.55
Thomas and Nolan expected to begin shooting in March of 2004. To give them adequate time for pre-production, they planned to start screen-testing actors in September 2003. Their biggest concern, said Thomas, was “How on earth were we going to put this skinny guy in the suit?”56 As September approached, Thomas kept checking in with Bale’s agent. She recalled, “I talked to his agent about it and asked him, ‘How big is he?’ ‘He’s tiny, but I’m sending him pizzas every day!’” Luckily, by September, Bale was back to looking like his old self.57
Nonetheless, during the first week of September, Nolan screen tested several actors for the role besides Bale, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Joshua Jackson, Cillian Murphy, and Eion Bailey.58 Murphy recalled that the studio had a few different Batsuits for the actors. “I think if you ask any male if he wants to get into the real suit, I mean, that was a dream come true obviously.” His, he believed, was “a Val Kilmer suit. I had to adjust it. It was very hot.”59
Nolan felt nearly all of the actors he tested would make credible Batmen. “Other actors we would look at, it would be a question of different interpretations,” said Nolan. “That is the very interesting thing about casting. It takes the character in a very different way if you cast it in a particular way. With Bruce Wayne, there are a lot of different ways he could’ve been played. But to me Christian was the way we were writing the character."60
On September 12, 2003, Cathy Dunkley and Jonathan Bing of Daily Variety made the announcement: Christian Bale had been chosen to play Batman. At that point, the film was untitled, and although Variety reported that Bale was only signed for the one picture,61 the actor himself later said that he had signed for three.62 Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov proclaimed, “Now that we’ve found the best person to play Batman, we are really looking forward to moving ahead with the rest of our casting and are excited about the exceptional group we are assembling.”63
Nolan was also happy to have gotten his first choice for Batman. “Christian Bale was the ideal choice to play a young Bruce Wayne, particularly a Bruce Wayne still struggling very much with the demons that drive him to become Batman. He is a very complex character who exists on the razor’s edge between good and bad. Christian embodies that sense of danger and ambiguity that can be channeled into something very positive and very powerful. He has that kind of intensity, that fire burning inside. You look into his eyes and you believe that this man would go to those extremes.”64
Although Bale, who was born in Wales on January 30, 1974, was just four years younger than Nolan, he had been in show business much longer. His mother, Jenny James, had once been a circus performer, and his father, a former RAF pilot and businessman named David Bale, was a stunt double for John Wayne on the 1962 film Hatari!65 When Bale was just two years old, his family—including two older sisters, Sharon and Louise, and a half-sister, Erin, from his father’s first marriage—left Wales. Bale spent his childhood moving about from Portugal to America to the English coastal resort town of Bournemouth.66 His parents eventually divorced; in September 2000, his father married famed feminist Gloria Steinem.67
Bale began his acting career as a child, appearing with comedian Rowan Atkinson in the London stage show The Nerd in 1984. A couple of years later, he was chosen—over 4,000 other hopefuls—for the starring role in Steven Spielberg’s World War II drama Empire of the Sun (1987). But movie stardom proved to be a mixed blessing at his English school. “Girls were all over me,” said Bale. “Boys just wanted to fight me.” His mother recalled, “The bullying was quite bad and it made him very sad. It really put him off the film and stardom thing. At the time he did not want to do any more acting.”68
As he matured, he built up an impressive film résumé, with roles in Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V (1989), the period musical Newsies (1992), and the historical drama Swing Kids (1993). While making Little Women (1994), he met and fell in love with Sandra “Sibi” Blazic, who was the assistant to the film’s star, Winona Ryder. Bale and Blazic married the day before Bale’s 26th birthday.69Little Women made Bale a heartthrob after an admirer in Canada began a fan website that spawned an army of “Baleheads.”70 As he entered his late 20s, Bale became known for playing dark, psychologically intense characters in films such as Velvet Goldmine (1998) and the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel American Psycho (2000), for which he won critical plaudits as serial killer Patrick Bateman.71
Interestingly, two years before Bale was cast as Batman, his older sister Louise Bale was the associate producer of a short fan-produced film called The Death of Batman (2003), an unrelentingly grim exercise in which Batman is captured by a thief and then drugged, shackled, beaten, raped and tortured to death. Written and directed by Donald Lawrence Flaherty and starring Christopher Stapleton as Batman, the film ends with the thief, an innocent man who had been wrongly sent to jail because of Batman’s actions, committing suicide. Batman, wracked with guilt and now an addict himself after being injected with daily doses of heroin, takes the heroin syringe and overdoses; his badly beaten body is found floating in the Gotham River. Besides acting as associate producer, Louise Bale also played Mrs. Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s mother, in a flashback showing young Bruce kneeling beside the body of his dead parents.
The announcement of Christian Bale’s casting pleased the most vocal Batfanatics, the opinion-influencers who posted on websites such as SuperheroHype. com and Joblo.com.72 “It’s an awesome responsibility, because the fan base for Batman is extraordinary, and there’s a lot of emotional investment in the character,” said Nolan.73 Warners hoped to avoid any negative buzz that might spread before the film was even released. But despite the secrecy surrounding the new film, daily updates and speculation about the plot, characters and production designs turned up on websites such as Ain’t It Cool News, Batman on Film, Dark Horizons, Chud and Superhero Hype.74
Warner Bros. was now fully committed to the film. Their confidence in Nolan was evident in the astronomical budget they gave him: $180 million. “It’s almost impossible to reinvent Batman,” said Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov. “Chris is reintroducing Batman, and it feels smart and cool and fresh. That’s no disrespect to the other movies, but it’s really Chris’ vision of Batman, and that’s what we’re supporting.”75
With generous financing behind him, Nolan felt free to pursue a dream cast for the film. “We looked back to the incredible cast of Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman,” said Nolan. “He had Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty and so many other great actors in supporting roles. We cast our film in a similar fash
ion, with an ensemble of wonderful actors who bring a depth and complexity to the characters that make Bruce Wayne’s world all the more real.”76
By the end of November, Michael Caine was in negotiations to play Alfred the butler.77 “We needed an actor who could bring humor and heart to the role, as well as a measure of gravitas,” said Emma Thomas. “There was only one man for the job.”78 An icon of British cinema, Caine had gone from leading man parts in the 1960s to character roles later in his career. “I’ve always regarded myself as a movie actor as opposed to a movie star,” said Caine. “When an actor gets a screenplay, he asks, ‘How can I change myself to suit the script?’ When a movie star gets a screenplay, they ask, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’”79
Caine was familiar with the earlier Batman movies. “I saw them all and liked most of them, I must say,” he said. “But when I got this script, it was called Batman Begins, and I wondered about that. And then when I read the script, I realized it was true—Batman begins. It’s a whole new thing in a whole new way—the way Christopher has done it. So it made me do it. There wouldn’t be much point in just playing an ordinary butler in another Batman: you know, coming in saying ‘Dinner is served’ or something.”80 Caine was also drawn to the script because of the humanity with which Goyer and Nolan infused the characters. “I liked their vision of showing Batman coming from a natural man,” said Caine. “If he’s bulletproof, where’s the suspense? If you have a real man, you have jeopardy and you have suspense. That’s what interested me.”81
Instead of being merely the Wayne butler, Nolan regarded Alfred’s role as pivotal. “Alfred is a man given the responsibility to raise the most incredible child of a generation,” said the director. “He helps him do incredibly important and frightening things that no parent would want their child to do.”82
“Alfred is the one constant in Bruce’s life, the one person who never gives up on him,” said Caine. “He’s also Bruce Wayne’s moral compass. Batman walks a very fine line between himself and the criminals he pursues, so he must maintain a higher moral code. Alfred isn’t afraid to give his opinion, especially when he thinks Bruce may have taken things too far.”83
Prior to shooting, Caine came up with a backstory for his character. “I wanted to be the toughest butler you’ve ever seen—not the normal English suave butler,” said Caine. “And so I made him an SAS sergeant, which is a very, very tough British army unit. And...he’s wounded. He didn’t want to leave the army, became the sergeant in charge of the sergeant’s canteen—or the sergeant’s mess, as it’s called in the British army. And he got found by Bruce Wayne’s father, who wanted the toughest butler he could find, and that’s what he got. And I used the voice of my original sergeant when I joined the British army. That’s his voice. That’s the back-story, and I’m waiting for Christopher Nolan to do Alfred: The Beginning.”84
In early December, Katie Holmes, a young actress who rose to fame as one of the stars of the WB’s hit TV series Dawson’s Creek, was offered the role of Rachel Dawes, subject to a screen test with Christian Bale. Although several actresses were considered, Holmes was the only one tested, in a scene directed by Christopher Nolan.85 Rachel was an original creation of Goyer and Nolan; she was one of the few major characters in Batman Begins not based on a character from the comic books.86 Nolan said he and Goyer created Rachel, the daughter of a Wayne house servant, to “represent the life Bruce Wayne might have if he weren’t tied into his destiny of having to create a very dark alter ego through which he helps people.”87
“One of the things about Rachel that I find so appealing is that she’s so idealistic,” said Holmes. “She’s the type of person that wants to make the world a better place. She wants to help people, she wants to save her city and she doesn’t have time for excuses.”88 Producer Emma Thomas said, “Rachel reminds Bruce of his father’s legacy, his duty to carry on his family’s philanthropic tradition, and she encourages him to do something meaningful with his life.”89
The fourth actor cast was Cillian Murphy, who landed the plum role of Dr. Jonathan Crane/the Scarecrow in December. Murphy came to Christopher Nolan’s attention after testing for the role of Batman a few months earlier.90 Born in County Cork, Ireland in 1976, Murphy began his career as a rock musician before turning to acting. His appearance in 2003’s 28 Days Later, a post-apocalyptic zombie film directed by Danny Boyle, lead to meatier parts in Breakfast on Pluto (2005), in which he played a glam transgender orphan, and 2006’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film about the Irish War of Independence that captured the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, having landed the role of the Scarecrow, the actor read all the Batman comics in which the villain appeared.91
In mid-February 2004, Morgan Freeman joined the cast, in the role of Lucius Fox, a character originally created by Len Wein and John Calnan for Batman # 307 in January 1979.92 As reimagined by Nolan and Goyer, Fox served the same purpose as Q in the James Bond films—he’s the gadget-master, the Merlin to Bruce Wayne’s Arthur. And like Desmond Llewellyn, who played Q in most of the James Bond films, Freeman was absolutely clueless when it came to modern-day gadgetry. “Technology leaves me in the dark,” said Freeman. “I’ve had a computer since the early days of the PC, but I still can’t initialize a disk. That’s Greek to me.”93
Analyzing his character, Freeman said, “Fox and Earle are like sandpaper rubbing against each other. I don’t think of Fox as being terribly ambitious or combative. He’s just really smart and well-educated. Earle has a great need to get rid of Fox, but he can’t just dump him; Fox knows too much. He has to keep him around so he can watch him. So he reduces him to being a warehouseman for all these wonderful toys.”94
For the pivotal role of Henri Ducard, who later reveals himself to be Ra’s al Ghul, Nolan cast Liam Neeson. The studio took pains to make sure the dual nature of the role remained secret. After the initial February 19, 2004 announcement that Neeson was playing “the villain, Ra’s al Ghul,”95Daily Variety ran a correction the next day, saying Neeson would play “Ducard, mentor to Bruce Wayne.”96
In describing his role, Neeson said, “Ducard had committed himself to an ideal of how he would love to see the world and he sees Bruce Wayne as someone who could make these ambitions tangible and real. Ducard reminds me of Ignatius of Loyola in the 15th Century, who formed the Jesuit Society. Ignatius was a very famous playboy and drunkard before he became an incredibly disciplined man and a saint. He’s someone I have a lot of admiration for—an extraordinary disciplinarian on a quest to find a true, natural justice in this world that will help mankind...Ducard understands Bruce Wayne’s pain because he lost someone in his life who was very dear to him, which led to his quest for a deeper sense of his destiny and spirituality. He believes you have to go into yourself to discover your dark side as well as your good side, and marry those forces in order to be able to achieve your full potential as a human being.”97
Five days later, it was reported that Ken Watanabe would play Ra’s al Ghul.98 “Ra’s al Ghul is a very mysterious, complicated character,” said Watanabe. “He’s very calm and quiet, but he’s also extremely powerful. I think of him as a silent volcano.”99 More casting news followed on March 4, when it was announced that Gary Oldman would be Lt. James Gordon.100 It was an unusual choice; Oldman was known for playing psychologically troubled characters, from Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy (1986) to Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), not to mention Dracula (1992). “Gary has never really played such a wholesome character,” said Nolan, “but he is a chameleon, and he absolutely inhabits the role of Gordon. The essential goodness of the man is very apparent from his first scene.”101 “I think Gordon’s hair tuned gray at a pretty young age,” said Oldman. “It’s difficult in this day and age to retain any kind of integrity, whatever the line of work you’re in, but trying to police Gotham City would turn anyone gray. What’s nice about the role is that Gordon is so honest and true blue. I like playing the one good apple in the bunch.”102
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In make-up, Oldman looked the spitting image of his comic-book counterpart. “Chris wanted me to look as much like Gordon does in the comic as I realistically could, and not be identifiable as coming from any particular part of the country,” said the actor. To project Gordon’s world-weariness, Oldman said, “I just played the jet lag.”103 During the course of filming, Oldman ended up making 12 round-trip flights from his Los Angeles home to locations in Chicago and London. “I did twenty-four flights,” he said. “I would fly in, go to the set—one day I flew in, I got out of a car and walked into a building, and I went then back, and I came back to L.A.” Though the flights were wearying, Oldman took them because he did not want to spend long periods away from his family.104
At the end of March, the last two members of the principal cast were announced: Rutger Hauer as Earle, the corrupt head of Wayne Enterprises, and Tom Wilkinson, who took on the role of mob boss Falcone.105 By the time he’d cast the main characters, Nolan had a two-time Oscar winner and two Oscar nominees in his cast. Michael Caine had been nominated for Best Actor Oscars for Alfie (1966), Sleuth (1972), Educating Rita (1983), and The Quiet American (2002); he won Supporting Actor Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and The Cider House Rules (1999). Morgan Freeman was a two-time Best Actor nominee, for Street Smart (1987) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Tom Wilkinson was a Best Actor nominee for In The Bedroom (2001).
While Nolan continued scriptwriting, casting, and assembling his crew— which included hiring Wally Pfister, his director of photography from Insomnia—production designer Nathan Crowley was busy with two tasks: designing the cityscape of Gotham City, and building a life-size working Batmobile. “Gotham will seem like this great city in a contemporary world and will be created through various cities,” said Nolan. “We are trying to avoid a villagey feel for Gotham, as it starts to get claustrophobic.”106
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