By Sean Chavel in Los Angeles

Christian Bale has been a rising young star for a number of years now, but he’s destined to come into the limelight with his performance as the caped crusader in Batman Begins. Bale’s first starring lead was in Steven Spielberg’s "Empire of the Sun" at age 13 (it’s one of Spielberg’s least famous films, yet one of the best of his “grown-up” movies). He took years off from acting in order to mature and to get an education, but during those years he did have a plum supporting role in the 1994 adaptation "Little Women" opposite Winona Ryder. In recent years, he’s made an impression in "American Psycho," "Shaft" and "Reign of Fire."

Q: Congratulations.

BALE: Thank you very much.

Q: Good stuff. "Batman Begins," that is…

BALE: Thank you.

Q: Are you happy with it?

BALE: Yeah, I’m really happy with it. I think that Chris did a fantastic job with it. I think it’s gonna be the first movie that really pleases the hard-core graphic novel fans of Batman, but also is something that people not familiar with can go along and just enjoy it because it’s good film-making and it’s, you know, a good story.

Q: How do you think everyone’s going to feel about having a British guy playing Batman?

BALE: You know, he’s a very American icon but he’s globally embraced. I live in the States now and I’m an actor. I’m gonna be a shape-shifter. So, I mean, who knows?

Q: I’m one of those life-long Batman fans and especially my favorite series when I was a kid was the Neil Adams stuff and the Denny O’Neil stuff. It’s great to see to see a serious Batman movie. Can you just talk about making it that way.

BALE: I think that that was what Bob Kane intended when he first created the character. I spoke with his wife and she said that he was kind of appalled at the TV series; that it was spoofing what he had intended. And you know then you got the great revival when Frank Miller did Batman: Year One and you got the artwork of Alex Ross and people. And, to me, if you’re gonna make Batman, you really have to pick a side. And either really send it up, the way that Adam West did - because a man running around in a bat suit can be a very funny thing - or, really take it seriously and delve into the demons, you know, within this character etcetera. And I think that the other movies kind of went in between, you know what I mean. You had like these little one-liner quips and things. I always got a sense that it was just Bruce Wayne in a bat suit rather than a becoming this other creature that kind of came out of his dark guts, you know, whenever he put on the suit. And in a way a kind of a, you know, demonic therapy that he needed just to channel his rage in order to be able to exist in every day life as Bruce Wayne, you know, without becoming a complete nut-case.

Q: Can you talk about the physical training; especially going from being rail-thin for The Machinist...

BALE: Yeah, I mean it was excessive because of that. You know, it was much harder because of that. I spoke with Chris whilst I was making The Machinist and he said, you know, I was gonna need to screen test for Batman at the beginning of September and this was like end of July. I was like a hundred and twenty one pounds at the time and he said “well, you know, can you put on any weight in that amount of time? Because, you know, nobody’s gonna be convinced by me telling them that you’re gonna be the next Batman, you know, if you’re like a toothpick.” And so I did have to put on a great deal of weight in just that short amount of time, and once they cast me, that’s when the real, you know, effort started just because that was when I actually had to start getting strong because, you know, he’s got no super powers. You have to look like you can be a brawler...

Q: But not superpowers?

BALE: But exactly, he has no superpowers. And so he has to look like he really can do what you see him doing, you know. And it was very- it was cutting it very fine, you know. I kind of just got ready in time for the beginning of principle photography.

Q: What was more physically taxing? Was it this role or was it The Machinist, because that I understood was....

BALE: I think that The Machinist, whilst it was more demanding mentally to start with, ultimately once you get accustomed to the change and in the losing weight, it was a much calmer and more comforting place mentally. I think the gaining weight fast is really the unhealthy thing. That was- I did actually feel hideous during that time and that’s what I wouldn’t repeat again.

Q: More unhealthy than losing the weight?

BALE: Yeah. No really, I felt absolutely fine in losing the weight. It was in putting the weight on too fast that I felt that I was pushing things too far.

Q: I had heard David Goyer say that Warner Brothers figured out if they had a successful Batman picture they could make, with the merchandising and everything, 3 to 4 billion dollars. I don’t know if they ever told you those figures..

BALE: NO, they didn’t tell me that.

Q: Can you just talk about the pressure on Batman and this whole movie that’s riding on my shoulders, especially how reviled and hated the last one is. How do you work with that kind of pressure hanging over you?

BALE: I really didn’t view it as being pressure because we were coming at it from a completely different angle. It was a re-invention and it was a recognition that the last ones just really had been, you know, not satisfactory at all. So, I just had a genuine belief that this was what like true Batman fans would be enjoying and wanting to see. And more importantly than that to me, this is what I had seen in the graphic novels and, you know, ultimately you gotta just go with what it is that you want to see in it and stop trying to think about pleasing everybody. Because, of course, not everyone’s gonna love the way that I portray Batman in this or what Chris has done with the movie. But we like it, you know. And so, you know, the test will be if we get asked back to do it again.

Q: Were those Frank Miller books you mentioned like Year One, Dark Knight Returns; was that a big inspiration for you?

BALE: Yeah. Very much, yeah. Those, and the artwork, like I said of Alex Ross, I really loved that. There’s one called War, I think it was. And then also the- I mean DC sent me just a box full of graphic novels which I had in the trailer all the time with me. But the two that I liked particularly was Dark Victory and The Long Halloween. They just had some really fantastic imagery in there of the severity of Batman and everything and I would kind of imitate those positions and, you know, adopt in practice.

Q: Sounds like you and Chris had a great working relationship as actor/director. Is that something you can see taking into a lot of Batman movies, doing something else with him?

BALE: Oh yeah. Very much, yeah. You know, I mean I don’t know from Chris’ point of view if I’ll forever be Batman for him, but absolutely. I think he’s a fantastic filmmaker. I’d be very interested to work with him on something else.

Q: Why do you think people are still so fascinated with this character?

BALE: I think it’s modern day mythology. I mean that’s really what it is. These are modern day gods, really. It’s what we wish we could be, it’s kind of our ideals of what we could be and particularly with Batman. He's fascinating because we really could be him - all right, you’d have to inherit a lot of money. But if you manage that then the idea is that it is possible to actually be this one, this particular super-hero. And to me, I always loved the Greek mythology as a kid and that was what really intrigued me when I first started reading the graphic novels in 2000 again. I hadn’t realized that’s essentially what the super-heros are. I just never made that connection that it’s modern day mythology and particularly, you know, American mythology.

Q: Did you approach this as playing two characters, Batman and Bruce Wayne, or one? I almost felt like the dominant character was Batman and it was like a pain to play Bruce Wayne.

BALE: Yeah. I mean, I did kind of view it as - the Batman - as being the absolute sincere, raging character that is within him. But there were really three characters because you’ve then got the Bruce Wayne facade; the Bruce Wayne that is used to throw people off, to make them think that he’s just such a wastrel and such a waste of space and just drunken billionaire guy that he could never possibly be Batman. Be then the younger Bruce Wayne, as well. The one leaving college and wanting to make good on his promise to his parents and give vengeance for their deaths. And I find each of them, each of his incarnations to be very interesting - and then again the older but angry guy in the jail in Buton, you know, and discovering who he is and getting some sense of purpose. So, I actually would put it as like four different characters or something, in there.

Q: With the anticipation of learning the origin of Batman, with also the anticipation of seeingall these heavyweights on screen, what did you take from each of them if anything?

BALE: You mean the other actors in the movie?

Q: The other actors, cast....

BALE: I took the confidence that I was making a good choice because the fact that we were getting this caliber of actor being interested in making it, you know, only kind of supported the fact that, well ‘hey, we’re onto something here. This is good’. And what you get from working with good actors is that they make you better. It’s just always the same thing.

Q:And how are you better?

BALE: It's just a feeling. It’s a feeling that you have that things should be- they should just flow. When things are working well there shouldn’t be a whole lot of effort. And when you’re working with the likes- you know Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, you know, and Cillian Murphy and Liam Neeson; there’s so many good actors in this. You just found ‘man that just worked’, you know. It just like a rhythm that you feel it. That’s all I can say. I can’t really describe to you verbally what it is, but you just feel that this is working. And with guys like that around, you kind of can’t miss.

"Batman Begins" opens in theaters June 15th.