During a GQ interview, Christian Bale revisited one of the weirder side effects of playing Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: a threat that mapped out his daily walk and warned someone would be waiting in an alley to “rip out” his brain. Curious rather than rattled, he went to the spot anyway—and kept returning—only to find no one there.
“So of course I was like, I'm going to that alley,” Bale said. Instead, “unfortunately nothing.”
Bale said the memory resurfaced when GQ pulled up the film’s infamous scene in which Bateman confronts a homeless man. At the time of the movie’s 2000 release—directed by Mary Harron and adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s novel—the project drew protests and calls for censorship, so the stray threat didn’t feel out of step with the moment.
Two decades on, Bale separates his feelings about the character from the job. He has no affection for Bateman’s monstrous worldview, but he’s spoken warmly about making the film with Harron—and he’s open to someone else taking a new swing at the material.