Remember when Hugh Grant got busted soliciting a prostitute and then had to do an “apology tour,” doing TV and newspaper interviews where he simultaneously apologized for his actions and promoted his new movie? Well, now Christian Bale is doing the same thing. He’s doing press for Terminator: Salvation while also apologizing for/justifying the notorious rant he went on against a crew member. The rant was caught on tape and listened to all over the country, even turning up in techno remixes and a Family Guy episode.
“I’ve managed to avoid what people imagine are the horrors of constant attention. I do exactly the same as I’ve always done. I don’t have an assistant. I don’t drive a flashy car. I do everything myself. I go to the supermarket myself, the hardware store,” he says. “It’s something I would greatly miss because I would start to feel like a prisoner. Just because I’m a friggin’ actor who can hit his marks and say his lines, big (expletive) whoop. Who cares?”
What Bale isn’t mentioning is that while he may not have an assistant now, he has certainly had them in the past. Perhaps he was burned by the way that ex-PA Harrison Cheung has made a mini-career out of talking smack about Bale in the press. Or perhaps being married to Sibi, a former celebrity assistant, has given him some perspective on what PAs have to go through? I’m very curious to know what caused the change of heart.
STA reader Matt sent me this very funny Family Guy promo video, which makes excellent use of that ubiquitous “Christian Bale telling off an assistant director” audio clip. As Matt himself puts it, the clip “combines celebrity gossip and cartoons in a really awkward and funny way.” Check it out:
Harrison Cheung does seem to love getting his name in the news. However, because his only name recognition is as Christian Bale’s former personal assistant, he only really has a chance of being a talking head if the subject is Christian Bale. So now that Bale is getting tons of negative press for the leaked audio clip of his tirade against a director of photography, Cheung is once again getting a publication to pay him money [they also got some quotes from Bale's mom, Jenny] for an ‘exclusive’ ‘inside’ look into Bale’s personality.
Bale’s former assistant Harrison Cheung says Christian was a tortured man who could veer wildly from insecurity to incandescent rage at the drop of a hat.
And he remembers how his father and sister would treat him as a “boy king”.
“Fame began to change him. Once, when Jenny and her mum arrived in
Los Angeles, Christian sent me to the airport to pick them up. Jenny was in tears because her son hadn’t come in person.”
No one was immune from Bale’s attacks, even his dad, who went on to marry Gloria Steinem. She was the feminist icon who coined the phrase “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”.
Cheung added: “Gloria liked to pontificate and was going on about something for ages at the dinner table one night. Christian suddenly let out a huge sigh and said, ‘For God’s sake woman, shut up!’”
Christian Bale is married to a former assistant. So it kind of makes sense that he would bond with his own assistant. Bale’s ex-PA, Harrison Cheung, who also worked as an “adviser” (whatever that means) recently gave an interview where he described Bale as “tortured” and “plagued by insecurity.”
Cheung, a self-confessed computer geek, first entered Bale’s life when he set up one of the first online fan clubs for the actor in the early Nineties, inadvertently creating a devoted cult fanbase in the process.
He corresponded with the then obscure 20-year-old from his home in Canada and in 1994 moved to California at Christian’s suggestion.
‘I started off running his fan club,’ Cheung explains. ‘But, in time, I would cook for him, I designed his website, I’d buy clothes for him, I would organise his finances, sort out medical appointments. Basically I ran his life.’
I am one of the seven people in America who didn’t go to see “The Dark Knight” this weekend. Luckily, the always-reliable John Brooks went to a midnight screening and reports back about Alfred (Michael Caine), the loyal assistant who helps Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Batman.
Early estimates (source: my head) put box office receipts for The Dark Knight’s opening day somewhere in the 400 bajillion dollar range. That’s good news for the fake world’s most beloved fictional PA: Alfred Pennyworth. Since I found myself with nothing else to do at 12:01 AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, I casually decided, purely on a whim, to see this largely overlooked little movie from the guy who made Memento.
Part surrogate father, part loyal servant to the great, bi-polar, largely insane avenger for justice, Bruce Wayne (known by night by his stage name “Batman”), Alfred finally gets the praise, screen time, and the chance to utter all the best aw-shucks words of comfort to Mr. Childhood Trauma he so richly deserves.
Sibi Blazic has been married to the superhot and supertalented Christian Bale for eight years. And how did they meet? Sibi used to work as Winona Ryder’s assistant while Ryder and Bale were filming Little Women. They have a three-year-old daughter, Emmaline. The couples eloped to Vegas just two months after hooking up.
That is all I had to say in this post. Please enjoy the gratuitous photo.
Remember when Hugh Grant got busted soliciting a prostitute and then had to do an “apology tour,” doing TV and newspaper interviews where he simultaneously apologized for his actions and promoted his new movie? Well, now Christian Bale is doing the same thing. He’s doing press for Terminator: Salvation while also apologizing for/justifying the notorious rant he went on against a crew member. The rant was caught on tape and listened to all over the country, even turning up in techno remixes and a Family Guy episode.
Christian Bale is 
I am one of the seven people in America who didn’t go to see “The Dark Knight” this weekend. Luckily, the always-reliable 