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Christian Bale's American Psycho Inspiration Wasn't a Slasher - It Was Tom Cruise

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• Christian Bale based his portrayal of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on Tom Cruise's intense friendliness and unnatural behavior in an interview with David Letterman.
• Bale's decision to model Bateman after Cruise added authenticity to his performance, as Bateman's forced happiness and exaggerated movements mirrored Cruise's onscreen and offscreen persona.
• While Nicolas Cage also served as an inspiration for Bateman, elements of Tom Cruise's mannerisms and energy can still be seen throughout the character's personality.

Christian Bale's portrayal of the psychopathic murderer Patrick Bateman has become iconic over the years--and for good reason. In American Psycho , a film based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the same name, Bateman's off-putting personality and over-the-top reactions in his head are disturbing and yet somewhat believable. However, as a result of his memorably exaggerated performance, Christian Bale decided to model Bateman after a real person to give him some authenticity. Surprisingly, Bale's portrayal wasn't modeled off of a serial killer, but rather fellow movie star Tom Cruise.

When American Psycho 's Patrick Bateman isn't being serious or villainous, he often wears a big grin and speaks in a forcibly happy manner. It almost feels like he's not human but instead someone observing humans and figuring out how they should behave in situations. Bale clearly put much thought into how he wanted Bateman to behave and drew inspiration from one of the most famous movie stars.

Updated on February 18, 2024 by Jordan Iacobucci: More than twenty years after its release, American Psycho continues to be a culturally significant film. This is due in large part to Christian Bale's chilling portrayal of Patrick Bateman, which has itself become iconic over the years. While many fans of the film may recognize that Bale based part of his character on Tom Cruise, that isn't the entire story. In the years since the film's release, Bale and those close to him have added to the history of how he crafted the character. As it turns out, there were multiple influences outside of Tom Cruise who helped inspire the creation of Patrick Bateman, adding to the mythos surrounding one of the best films from the early 2000s.

Tom Cruise's Interviews Inspired Christian Bale in American Psycho

American psycho's ending, explained: is paul allen really dead.

American Psycho has a chaotic and confusing ending. It begged the question of whether Patrick Bateman was truly sadistic or if it was all in his head.

In an interview with director Mary Harron , the inspiration for Christian Bale's American Psycho inspiration was revealed to be action film superstar Tom Cruise. Harron recalled that, one day, Bale had phoned her with the news that he had found inspiration for American Psycho . Having watched Tom Cruise doing an interview with late-nate commentator David Letterman, Bale saw the exact qualities he wanted to portray in Bateman. Harron described Cruise as having this "very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes" and that Bale was really taken aback by his energy. He thought it would naturally fit into the unnatural business world of American Psycho , which it certainly did.

Tom Cruise is known for being very intense, both onscreen and behind the scenes. Moreover, the actor always comes across as incredibly happy due to his big grin and exaggerated movements. Though Cruise's co-stars typically praise the actor , some viewers have labeled his energy as being forced, like Patrick Bateman's. Even so, others see Cruise's mannerisms as being nothing more than a genuine enthusiasm for the art of cinema. Either way, there is certainly no denying an unnaturalness to the actor's behavior, explaining why Christian Bale thought it would be perfect to adapt for American Psycho .

Christian Bale Used Tom Cruise's Mannerisms for Patrick Bateman

An american psycho theory turns patrick bateman's exercise regimen sinister.

American Psycho is a film that keeps audiences guessing till the end. But one theory adds another layer to the film's iconic killer Patrick Bateman.

Although Patrick Bateman is obviously a lot more aggressive than Tom Cruise, there are hints of his personality in American Psycho . For example, when Bateman brings a drunk colleague home and is gearing up to murder him, his big grin and wide eyes are eerily reminiscent of Cruise. And, much like in Cruise's Letterman interview, everything Patrick Bateman talks about -- especially music -- is with a deep passion, walking the line between genuine and forceful.

Despite the resemblance, it's safe to assume that Christian Bale's performance in American Psycho wasn't purposefully targeting Tom Cruise by relating him to a serial killer. It would appear that Christian Bale has nothing personal against Cruise, but rather leapt at the chance to craft a believable character. But still, some audiences dislike Cruise due to his involvement in the Scientology movement, whereas many who have worked with him insist he's one of the nicest and most professional people they've ever met. Even so, his connection to the group has generated a different public image for Cruise than that of the 80s and 90s, resulting in various caricatures, including Bale's iconic performance as Patrick Bateman.

Who Else Inspired Patrick Bateman In American Psycho

Sigma or killer the truth behind american psycho's patrick bateman.

Patrick Bateman from American Psycho has been used online in various memes to describe Sigma behavior. But is he truly a Sigma?

Twenty-three years after its initial release, American Psycho is still considered to be a masterpiece of filmmaking and has managed to remain surprisingly culturally relevant, even for a new generation of viewers. With over two decades in hindsight, some of the widely reported stories about Christian Bale's performance in the classic 2000s film can be put in order. Over the years, the stories about Bateman being directly based on Tom Cruise have become very well known, but it isn't quite as simple as some people may have previously thought. While it is true that the actor based parts of the character of Patrick Bateman on Tom Cruise, there was more than one person who inspired the creation of the iconic serial killer.

One of the major inspirations for Patrick Bateman outside of Tom Cruise was none other than Nicolas Cage . According to Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman by Harrison Cheung, Bale partially based his performance on that of Nicolas Cage in Vampire's Kiss . The film in question sees Cage, known for his overacting and boisterous roles, portray a literary agent who slowly creeps toward madness--not unlike Patrick Bateman in American Psycho . Vampire's Kiss has become a cult classic, with Cage's performance remaining one of the most memorable parts of the film. It would appear that the more unhinged side of Patrick Bateman stems from Cage's performance, though elements of Tom Cruise still remain sprinkled throughout the character's personality.

An actor often draws many inspirations from the real world for each individual character he portrays. Especially in a role as complex and deep as that of Patrick Bateman, it isn't surprising that Christian Bale sought to ground his character in real influences. Likely an amalgamation of many different people, including Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage, Patrick Bateman is a character who speaks to generations because of just how real a character he is.

American Psycho

A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

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American psycho: how tom cruise inspired christian bale's performance.

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Tom Cruise was the perfect inspiration for Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman performance in American Psycho , and it's even more meaningful because of a shared connection between the movie, Patrick Bateman, and the Mission: Impossible series actor. American Psycho is a film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel of the same name. While American Psycho has always been a cult classic, it has been especially popular in recent years thanks to its vast treasure trove of meme-worthy content. A lot of the credit for that has to go to Christian Bale and his iconic performance as Patrick Bateman.

Patrick Bateman is a Wall Street investment banker who invests a lot in being young, handsome, and fit. The Upper West Side resident obsesses over modern trends in art and music, and he is known for his sweaty passion for Paul Allen’s business card, melancholy thoughts about Whitney Houston’s debut LP, and a propensity for having to “ return some videotapes ." However, he is also notorious for being a serial killer, although American Psycho 's ending is noncommittal about what Patrick Bateman actually did versus what he fantasized.

Related: American Psycho: What If Leonardo DiCaprio Played Patrick Bateman

Regardless, Patrick Bateman’s journey in American Psycho is remarkable thanks to Christian Bale’s performance. According to American Psycho co-writer and director Mary Harron, Christian Bale saw Tom Cruise on David Letterman’s show and observed how “[Tom Cruise] just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes .” Christian Bale drew inspiration from that interview, and his ensuing performance as Patrick Bateman would prove to be vital in highlighting American Psycho 's running theme of identity.

Why Christian Bale's Tom Cruise Inspiration Was Perfect For American Psycho

Identity is a key theme in American Psycho. There are even instances of literal mistaken identity, like Paul Allen confusing Patrick Bateman with Marcus Halberstram . However, the protagonist with " killer looks " struggles with self-identity as Bateman consciously recognizes he’s not all there. Christian Bale leverages the power of deceptive appearances by letting Bateman’s exterior façade crack almost imperceptibly during certain moments; when he runs into an acquaintance at the dry cleaners, his face is pleasant during the interaction but turns into pure hatred when he goes through the door and looks back for half a second. Christian Bale’s American Psycho performance is remembered mostly for the kinetic moments, but it’s those kinds of little details that make Bale's performance so great and the onscreen Patrick Bateman so terrifying. It's this duplicity, as identified and suggested by Bale on the part of Cruise in the Letterman interview, that made the Mission: Impossible actor an interesting inspiration.

Of course, there is nothing to suggest that Cruise has ever experienced anything close to Bateman's extreme psychological problems. However, there remains a surprising and intriguing connection between the two that goes beyond Bale's comments. In the American Psycho source material, Bateman actually shares an apartment block with Cruise, inviting a direct comparison between the fictional and non-fictional figures, even before Bale used Cruise to inspire his own performance. This complex relationship further ties into American Psycho ’s theme of identity in a way that perhaps not even Bret Easton Ellis could have known when he made Patrick Bateman and Tom Cruise neighbors in his novel nine years before the film adaptation.

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Remember how Christian Bale nailed the character of Patrick Bateman in ‘American Psycho ‘? Reportedly Tom Cruise played a major role in its inspiration. ‘American Psycho ‘ is a horror film released in 2000. The movie is based on n Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel of the same name.

Patrick, played by Bale, is a New York City Wall Street investment banker but has an alternate life as a serial killer. The movie has been a great success over the years not just on the big screens but also on meme pages and has rightly become a cult classic over time. Let’s look at how Tom Cruise inspired Christain Bale for the role.

Read more: Christian Bale Is Willing To Join ‘Star Wars’ Franchise On One Weird Condition

Tom Cruise Inspired Christian Bale

If you have seen the film, you must have noted that it constantly plays around with mistaken identity. Christian Bale revealed that took the sole inspiration from observing Tom Cruise on David Letterman’s show. ‘ American Psycho ‘ co-writer and director Mary Harron told that according to Bale, Tom “just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.”

“It was definitely a process. We talked a lot, but he(Christian) was in L.A. and I was in New York. We didn’t actually meet in person a lot, just talked on the phone. Talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave . And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy ,” Mary Harron revealed in an interview in 2009.

Read More: Christian Bale Reveals How Taylor Swift Became A Part Of ‘Amsterdam’

What Was ‘American Psycho’ Movie Plot?

The movie follows Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investment banker on Wall Street in 1987’s New York City. He lives a wealthy and luxurious lifestyle. Patrick has a fiancée Evelyn Williams, who is played by Reese Witherspoon.

One day Bateman loses his temper and stabs a homeless man in an alley. Patrick despises a co-worker Paul Allen and soon kills him. From there, he starts his killing spree and he pretty much shoots the head of everyone who appears in his way.

Read more: Who Is Christian Bale’s Wife? Know All About Sibi Blazic

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How Christian Bale's American Psycho Performance Was Influenced By Tom Cruise

Now that it's been two whole decades since its release, it feels safe to say that Mary Harron's " American Psycho " is a bona fide horror classic. Based on the gripping Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name, Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner created a biting critique of corporate America and breathed new life into Ellis' satirical examination of toxic masculinity before we had a word for it. "American Psycho" tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a handsome, young, white-collar professional in 1987 New York City. By day, Bateman seems like a standard narcissistic greed-hound, but by night, he's a serial killer building up a hefty body count. His fiance (Reese Witherspoon) is none the wiser, but after killing his coworker Paul Allen (Jared Leto), a detective (Willem Dafoe) starts inching closer to Bateman's extra-curricular activities, causing his grasp on his double life to slip.

Christian Bale's performance as Patrick Bateman is considered one of the best, but he wasn't the original choice for the iconic role. Producer Edward R. Pressman bought the film rights to the novel in 1992, with Johnny Depp eyed for the lead role and "Re-Animator" director Stuart Gordon at the top of the list. The project went through a variety of hands, with Lionsgate pursuing Edward Norton, Ewan McGregor, and Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead. Harron, however, fought for Christian Bale, who turned down roles in the hopes that he would soon be playing the character. Fortunately, it all paid off, and Bale's performance helped catapult him into Hollywood superstardom. That performance, however, wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't for an unlikely hero ... Tom Cruise

'Intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes'

Christian Bale's performance as Patrick Bateman is especially haunting, considering how realistic it seems to so many people we witness in real life. In an interview regarding the film's 20th anniversary , Mary Harron confessed that one of the biggest inspirations for Bale's performance was Tom Cruise himself, not Cruise's portrayal of a specific movie character. Harron had challenged Bale to think of Bateman like an alien studying human nature, which inspired him to study the energy of Tom Cruise. Specifically, Tom Cruise during a 1999 interview on "Late Night with David Letterman." If you look up the interview on YouTube, the first result is labeled " Tom Cruise goes crazy live on Letterman ," so Bale was seemingly not alone in his assessment of this particular moment. Bale described his energy as "a very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes."

Tom Cruise is one of those actors who exists in the constant state of "movie star," even when off set, which makes for a perfect inspiration for someone like Patrick Bateman who thrives off of his ability to convince those around him that he's the right guy for any circumstance. In order for Bateman to ward off suspicion of his true nature, he must constantly be playing the long game, presenting a charming demeanor as a cover for the rage within. Tom Cruise is obviously not secretly a serial killer, but given his heavily curated public persona, he's the kind of guy Patrick Bateman could totally pick up some pointers from.

Miles Fisher marries the worlds of Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman

Ironically enough, musician and actor Miles Fisher is proof positive that Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman are two sides of the same coin. The "Final Destination 5" star has gone viral on multiple occasions for his videos imitating Tom Cruise, in particular, " Tom Cruise: 2020 Presidential Announcement ." Fisher first parodied the actor in the 2008 "Superhero Movie," but has continued his impersonations of the movie star well into 2022. The year following "Superhero Movie," Fisher released a music video for his cover of The Talking Heads' "This Must Be The Place," but as a recreation of "American Psycho." All of Bateman's most memorable moments are on display, with Fisher impersonating the performance with uncanny accuracy. Watching the two videos back to back is genuinely uncomfortable, because while the characters of Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman are obviously very different, there's still an unsettling level of similarity that now has us dying for a Tom Cruise horror movie.

Tom Cruise Came Across As A Completely Different Person During His First Ever Appearance With David Letterman

Tom Cruise always had fans talking after his interviews, however, he took a different approach in the late '80s with David Letterman.

At the age of 61, Tom Cruise continues to shine at the top of Hollywood thanks to his performances in Top Gun: Maverick and the latest Mission: Impossible installment. However, the road to the top took many twists and turns along the way. It seems as though Tom's interviews didn't do him any favors during the late '90s and into the early 2000s. We'll take a look back at candid moments that derailed his career, and how he felt about it.

In addition, we'll reveal the different extremes of Tom Cruise and his personality when appearing alongside David Letterman . During his first appearance, Tom Cruise seemed to be completely different. We'll reveal what went on during his first time alongside Dave, and how different Cruise was alongside the host in the later years.

RELATED - How Jeremy Renner Nearly Took Over For Tom Cruise In Mission Impossible

Tom Cruise Revealed He's Often Misunderstood By The Media

Throughout his career, it seems like interviews have done more harm than good for Tom Cruise. That was especially true during his interview alongside Oprah , during his memorable 'couch jumping' incident. Controversy continued to follow the actor alongside Matt Lauer on the Today show.

Nonetheless, despite the controversy, Cruise mentioned alongside Pop Sugar that he's largely misunderstood.

"Listen I, I feel like definitely things have been misunderstood, and there are things I could have done better. But then there's also that world where you go, 'Oh, it's been spun to such an extent that. That's a truth also."

Cruise continues, "Knowing when and where to communicate, I think that's important. A lot of times I was nervous giving interviews. Or I wasn't sometimes as comfortable about things. And I realized that it's okay. There's stuff you have to just let go. I just have to do the best I can."

RELATED - How Tom Cruise's First Mission: Impossible Co-Star Emmanuelle Béart Really Felt About Working Alongside The Actor

Of course, the interview troubles are a thing of the past, as Cruise continues to generate millions at the box office. Still, fans can't help but notice how different Cruise was back in the day, especially during his interview alongside Letterman way back in the summer of 1988.

Tom Cruise Appeared To Be Extremely Calm During His First Late Show Appearance With David Letterman In 1988

Unlike his other future interviews which saw high energy, this particular experience alongside David Letterman was quite the opposite. During his first time alongside David Letterman, Cruise was incredibly calm. He was hardly moving in his chair, while giving calm and cool answers to the questions given by the host. Cruise discussed various topics, including his experience in driving fast cars for roles. Never once did Tom seem to be over the top, instead, he kept things level throughout the chat.

Fans can see the moment for themselves in the throwback video below.

RELATED - Tom Cruise's Attempt At A Career Comeback Turned Into His Worst Film Of All Time

As expected, fans were chiming in with all sorts of comments, especially given how Tom evolved over time following this very interview.

One fan notes, "His personality has indeed morphed over the years. Fascinating what money in and of itself will do to a person notwithstanding fame. I am happy and sad for him all at once. Unbelievably gifted in the looks department."

Another fan noted Tom's hilarious reaction to Letterman ripping his co-star, Paul Newman.

"Favorite part is Tom Cruise getting caught off guard and his adorable reaction when Letterman asked, "does it bother you that you carried Paul Newman in the movie."

Years later, Cruise would reappear on the Late Show alongside David Letterman and this time around, things were very different.

Fans Compared Tom Cruise's Later Appearance On David Letterman's Late Show To Christian Bale's American Psycho Character

It was a much different vibe in the later years as Tom Cruise appeared alongside David Letterman for yet another interview. Cruise detailed the story of flying at a high altitude, while turning off the oxygen for the back passenger. Cruise laughed off the experience, while Letterman looked on telling Cruise, "isn't that attempted manslaughter?" That only created more laughter from Tom.

The interview was later compared to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho . It seems like Christian Bale took the interview as motivation for his role. Fans agreed after watching Tom's interview alongside Letterman.

"This is the interview that inspired Christian Bale in his role as Patrick Bateman in American psycho. A whole lot of smiling and laughing with nothing behind the eyes. A never ending façade," a fan notes.

Others just compared Tom Cruise to a regular person, who also has a sense of humor.

"It's a very internal joke, he's reliving the moment in a safe perspective....I laugh about things uncontrollably after the fear and worry is gone...it proves he's human with a great sense of humor."

Without a doubt, Tom always left fans talking during his interview in the '90s and into the early 2000s.

Tom Cruise Inspired Christian Bale's Performance in 'American Psycho'

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The Big Picture

• Christian Bale drew inspiration from Tom Cruise's intense friendliness with "nothing behind the eyes" for his portrayal of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho .
• Both Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman strive to fit in and conform to societal expectations.
• While Cruise has never played a character exactly like Bateman, his other roles showcase similar qualities and an understanding of Bateman's personality makeup.

Christian Bale is one of Hollywood's finest actors. If there's any actor that has continued the legacies of Paul Muni and Daniel Day-Lewis by being true acting chameleons, it's him. With one of the most one-of-a-kind metabolisms in human history that allows him to truly take on whatever shape he needs to, from a scrawny racer in Ford v Ferrari to the big gut and bald-headed Dick Cheney in Vice , few actors have been as shape-shifting as him. American Psycho is the role that officially made him a star and forced people to take notice of him. It wasn't just his chiseled body and empty commercialized voice that made his performance a revelation, but also the behavioral traits he stole from an actually not-all-that-surprising source that helped him unlock Bateman from within.

American Psycho

In New York City in 1987, a handsome, young urban professional, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer by night. The cast is filled by the detective (Willem Dafoe), the fiance (Reese Witherspoon), the mistress (Samantha Mathis), the coworker (Jared Leto), and the secretary (Chloë Sevigny). This is a biting, wry comedy examining the elements that make a man a monster.

Who Is Patrick Bateman in 'American Psycho'?

As Bateman says at the beginning of American Psycho , there is an idea of who he is, but he is simply not there. While many have tried to argue that this is meant to be read on a deeper level as insight into a once-good man who's been fully consumed by capitalism, the reality is that it's probably far more literal than anyone thought. If you look across interviews with original book author Bret Easton Ellis and film co-writer and director Mary Harron , they attest that the book and subsequent film could only truly work when viewed as a dark satirical comedy skewering the fragility of the male ego in an ultra-capitalist society .

With that logic in mind, it makes more sense to view Patrick Bateman as less a human being with traditional motivations and more like someone impersonating a human being. When Bateman tries to do "normal" things like talk about important issues to think about in the current world or describe why he loves his favorite music albums, his voice slips into the default state of an "as seen on TV" sales rep as dictated by a teleprompter. So, with all that said, when Christian Bale took on this assignment and understood that he was playing a humanoid creature that can only simulate what it's like to be truly human, who did he turn to for inspiration? Tom Cruise .

How Did Tom Cruise Inspire Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman?

Yes, Tom Cruise. The death-defying, cinema-saving icon himself inspired American Psycho 's Patrick Bateman. In a 2009 interview with Mary Harron , she said that Bale once called her and said that he had a light bulb moment. In trying to nail how "Martian-like" Bateman was and how he was "watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave," Bale stumbled upon a conversation between Tom Cruise and David Letterman . Bale made note of how Cruise "just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes," and he was inspired by this energy. She didn't elaborate much beyond this, but it's still a goldmine.

Cruise has garnered a lot of respect throughout the years, being consistently touted as both a supremely talented and versatile actor and one of the nicest, most magnetic people you could possibly be around . But that reputation has always been underlined with this unspoken acceptance that he seems... let's just say "intense." It's too easy to pin this all on the couch-jumping incident and his "I am the last true movie star and I will fight for that title with my dying breath" energy. The way he throws himself into everything he does with too much energy is a bit jarring . Remember the time he got water sprayed in his face at a red carpet event for War of the Worlds and mercilessly chewed the prankster out by constantly asking "Why'd you do that?" all while smiling the biggest smile he could possibly muster? Or how eager he is for us to see him jumping off the top of a mountain or dangling off of a plane in midair? Yes, it's a little... strange.

Tom Cruise and Patrick Bateman Both Want To Be the Best

With this in mind, it makes the black humor of Patrick Bateman even funnier than it already was. You start to look more closely at American Psycho for Tom Cruise-shaped Easter eggs, seeing if Bateman does something that can create a direct link. The way Cruise talks on talk shows, especially when he's going into sales rep mode, is most evident when Patrick goes on one of his signature speeches about the wonders of his mediocre taste in music. The Huey Lewis rant has been picked apart to death and is arguably the most manic of his outbursts, but the Cruise-ian element is how unwavering he is once he gets going.

Tom Cruise Made a Blink-and-You-Miss-It Cameo in a Brat Pack Western

Tom Cruise plays a Western villain! But only for a few seconds…

Paul Allen ( Jared Leto ) asking if he's wearing a raincoat does absolutely nothing to stop Bateman from preaching the wonders of conformity, or capping him with an ax, for that matter. It calls to mind the way Cruise can hold an audience under his spell, be it when he's convincing Rod Tidwell ( Cuba Gooding, Jr. ) to keep him as his agent in Jerry Maguire , or how he holds the attention of an entire audience of men's rights activists when he's lecturing them in Magnolia . Outside his music monologuing, the other big thing about Bateman that fits Cruise's sensibility is summarized in his assertion, "I want to fit in." By all accounts, Cruise's entire life has been devoted to making himself the biggest star in the world, and doing what it takes to maintain that position.

At almost every turn, he made the right choice in shifting sets to satisfy what audiences wanted from him. He's worked with auteur directors like Tony Scott and Francis Ford Coppola in the '80s, then aligned himself with the Mission: Impossible franchise . He's also stretched his dramatic acting muscles with films like Jerry Maguire and Magnolia in the '90s and has committed himself to being the biggest action star in the world in the 21st century with projects like Top Gun: Maverick . With some notable exceptions (we do not speak of Knight and Day ), Cruise has a knack for morphing into what audiences would respond to at the moment. Patrick Bateman's whole philosophy is fitting himself into whatever the culture around him tells him is cool.

Tom Cruise Has Played Characters Similar to American Psycho's Patrick Bateman

Although Tom Cruise has never given a performance quite like Bale's in American Psycho , you can find Bateman-esque qualities in other roles. In Collateral , he was a sociopath assassin who funneled his philosophy of life into murder. In Magnolia , he was a charismatic public speaker masking a deep-seated insecurity over his relationship with his father. Jerry Maguire features him as a powerful white-collar agent questioning his sense of what's important in his life. Cruise has the ability to imbue his characters with a sense of clear focus and intensity that can communicate an undertone of rumbling anxiety and wavering conviction, much like how Bale can communicate Bateman's progressing crumbling of self.

Tom Cruise’s Dedication to His Work Only Intensifies

American Psycho 's legacy has only grown in recent years, thanks in no small part to Christian Bale going on to have such an incredible career. The character of Patrick Bateman has been analyzed and misrepresented , becoming a poster boy for things he wasn't supposed to. It feels like he has become somewhat divorced and distorted from the relatively straightforward consumerism satire from which he was born.

In a similar vein, Tom Cruise's career also feels as if it has evolved from what he once was . Long gone are the days of him as a cocky underdog with an unexpected empathetic undercurrent, and instead we have a man who constantly risks his life on-screen for our pleasure . As the behavioral layers gradually peeled away to uncover Bateman's deep existential insecurity and narcissism in American Psycho , so too, did the acting layers gradually peel away to reveal Tom Cruise's film choices and priority to please all audiences. It goes to show how far a killer work ethic and unbridled passion can take you — for better or for worse.

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Christian Bale Based “Psycho” on Tom Cruise: Director

"he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes," the film's director said of cruise, by xana o'neill • published october 22, 2009 • updated on august 24, 2012 at 3:26 am.

Christian Bale 's inspiration for his role as a dead-behind-the-eyes sociopath in the film "American Psycho" was none other than Tom Cruise , the film's director revealed.

In an interview with Black Book , director Mary Harron said she spent a lot of time on long-distance phone calls with the hunky actor when he was in L.A. and she was in New York trying to hash out how to best play the merciless murderer Patrick Bateman in the 2000 horror flick.

"It was definitely a process," Harron told the magazine. "We talked a lot." 

Then, one day it clicked for Bale.

"We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave," Harron said.

"And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman , and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy." 

The news comes on the heels of Bronson Pinchot's accusations that the actor made "constant unrelated homophobic comments" on the set of the 1983 "Risky Business."

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Cruise's rep denied the allegations to told Entertainment Weekly .

"Obviously, this is so far removed from who Tom Cruise is as a person, this must have been said in jest,"  the rep said.

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The bloody banality of american psycho, bret easton ellis' novel anticipated the bleak-humored, pop culture-obsessed sensibilities of the 1990s. but is it any good.

TAGGED AS: Horror

When it was released to thundering controversy and massive hype in 1991, Bret Easton Ellis ’ satirical novel American Psycho was a scandal, a pop-culture phenomenon, and a flashpoint for heated arguments about censorship, free expression, misogyny, violence, corporate responsibility, and pornography more than it was a book people might actually read and, even more improbably, enjoy.

That’s because American Psycho is an exceedingly difficult book to read. The novel’s endless parade of explicit, stomach-churning, pornographic, boundary-pushing violence against animals, homeless people, and young women makes it a struggle to finish, especially for delicate souls like myself. But it’s also hard to read because so much of it is boring, tedious, monotonous, and repetitive to the point of perversity.

What makes Bret Easton Ellis’ lurid controversy magnet such a strange, tricky proposition is that its dreariness feels largely intentional. It’s supposed to be shallow, vacuous, and deadeningly repetitive. It’s devoid of insight into the human condition, and it’s filled with deplorable characters who are similar to the point of being interchangeable — one of the novel’s running jokes is that its murderous, woman-and-humanity-hating protagonist and narrator, Patrick Bateman, is constantly mistaken for peers who look, act, dress, and talk the same way because they are all products of the same colleges, prep schools, and social circles.

After suffering through nearly 400 pages of lovingly rendered ultra-violence against women and even more lovingly rendered descriptions of what everyone is wearing, I couldn’t help but feel like we’re not supposed to enjoy the book. Instead, we’re supposed to feel implicated by it, to see our own emptiness reflected in the pulpy story of an inhuman ghoul who comes off as the worst person in the world even before he begins doing unspeakably cruel and deranged things to women — sometimes while they’re dead, and sometimes while they’re still alive — so he can derive an extra level of sadistic pleasure from their agonized screams and soul-consuming terror.

But just because something is part of an intentional satirical strategy — and to give Ellis credit, the book certainly has a consistent authorial vision and voice, in the sense that it makes the same goddamn points over and over again — does not mean it is good.

American Psycho feels like the kind of book people buy without any real intention of reading. In that respect, it’s like Stephen Hawking’s  A Brief History Of Time (which, alas, wasn’t quite brief enough to actually be read), except that a copy of Hawking’s best-seller strategically placed on a coffee table implicitly conveys that the owner of said copy is intellectually curious enough to want to read a famous book by a smart guy who knows all about science and stuff, while a copy of American Psycho hints that its owner is hip, edgy, unintimidated by the kind of violence not generally seen outside of snuff films, and eager to have an informed opinion in the debate about the novel’s cultural value.

When, after countless false starts, the film was finally adapted by I Shot Andy Warhol director Marry Harron with Christian Bale in the lead in 2000, it officially removed the final reason anyone would possibly subject themselves to reading Ellis’ exploration of the moral corruption of 1980s Manhattan. Harron’s movie is the rare film adaptation of a culturally significant novel that’s widely, if not universally, held to be superior to the text that inspired it. Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner took what little value there is in Ellis’ book and tightened, sharpened, and amplified it while wisely excluding the enormous amount in the book that’s dull and repugnant.

A literal, exhaustively faithful adaptation of American Psycho would run six hours, be banned in every country, and be unwatchable, but these filmmakers did a spectacular job alchemizing literary dross into cinematic gold. It helped that they were able to show what Ellis could only describe, and when a work is all about superficial appearances, that’s an enormous advantage.

One iconic scene in particular is an especially good example. During a lunch meeting, Patrick Bateman is filled with existential dread when his professional colleagues pull out business cards whose intricate, exquisite details (“bone coloring, Silian Rail lettering” or “eggshell with Romalian type”) both dazzle and enrage him because his card pales in comparison. On the page, the scene falls relatively flat because the details that make the film scene so wonderfully specific in its satire are crowded out by an avalanche of similar details about clothes, electronics, and consumer goods.

American Psycho the novel feels like a bizarre, bloody shotgun marriage between a Brooks Brothers catalogue and sadistic literary porn. Bateman is compelled to identify the designer, style, and features of the clothes of everyone he encounters. A typical early passage, where Bateman checks out three “hardbodies” (his default description for every woman with a nice body, i.e. most of the women in the book) while clubbing with friends reads, “One is wearing a black side-buttoned notched-collar wool jacket, wool-crepe trousers and a fitted cashmere turtleneck, all by Oscar De La Renta; another is wearing a double-breasted coat of wool, mohair and nylon tweed, matching jeans-style pants and a man’s cotton dress shirt, all by Stephen Spouse; the best-looking one is wearing a checked wool jacket and high-waisted wool skirt, both from Barney’s, and a silk blouse by Andra Gabrielle.” Honestly, I found the idea that a man who does not work in fashion would instantly be able to identify so much information about every garment he comes across far more unrealistic than Bateman murdering dozens of people in brutal, perverse, and fairly public ways and never getting caught.

Like Patrick Bateman, Ellis is a big believer in overkill. If he only needs to repeat something five times to really get his point across, Ellis will repeat it a thousand times. If you enjoyed the description of the women’s clothes in the paragraph above, you’re in luck, because there are literally hundreds more passages pretty much exactly like it.

There are telling, novelistic details that succinctly and indelibly capture the world and people they’re describing. Then there are numbingly excessive details, like the ones here, that add little to our understanding of Patrick Bateman’s mind and only serve to pad out the word count to a punishing length. American Psycho doesn’t need an editor: it needs a butcher to lop off its first third.

And the crazy thing is that the mind-numbing first hundred pages of the book has little actual violence. Bateman’s worst crimes are clearly the ones where he tortures, murders, mutilates and abuses the bodies of young women, sometimes with the assistance of small rodents. Those are genuinely sickening. But his secondary — and still very substantial — crime is that he’s terribly dull, a man without a soul, with a festering sickness where his conscience should be.

Bateman is less a man than a malevolent spirit defined by the labels on his designer clothes, his perfect body and face, the impossibly expensive, exclusive restaurants he frequents, and the soulless, glistening mainstream pop he not only champions but critiques, or rather extols, in three separate manifestos on three of his favorite artists: Whitney Houston, Genesis, and Huey Lewis and The News.

As with everything else in the book, the use of music is heavy-handed and obvious. Because Patrick Bateman lacks a soul, he adores music that reflects his soullessness. In his world, “professional” is the highest possible praise. He says his favorite compact disc is Bruce Willis’ The Return Of Bruno. He’s so unapologetic in his racism (the N word is doled out liberally, along with slurs and epithets of all stripes; to be anything other than rich, white, straight, and male is to be subhuman in his world) that he not only prefers black music to be made by soulless white men; he prefers black music to be made by soulless white men who aren’t even musicians.

Like so much of what we’ll be covering here, American Psycho revels and delights in its own artifice, in its plastic disposability, in the sense that not only does it not chronicle the world as we know it, but it describes a world that could not exist, that does not exist, that functions only as a commentary on pop culture and evil and spiritual emptiness and the dispiriting decadence of a ghoulish ruling class.

Part of this is accomplished by making Bateman the most unreliable of unreliable narrators, a madman who regularly describes things that could only exist in the fevered imagination of a confessed lunatic. Ellis doesn’t delineate between what is real and what is fantasy, and blurs the line further by having people repeatedly profess to have recently dined with people Bateman has described murdering in extensive detail. Bateman also repeatedly talks about his life as if it were a movie; he seems weirdly cognizant that he is a fictional character, a villain in a story instead of an actual human being. The lines blur so extensively that it’s possible to assume — and some have — that none of it is real, that it’s all a pornographic, violent power fantasy from a man who may not be a mass murderer or may not exist at all as anything other than a yuppie boogeyman, the worst of the worst.

American Psycho is seemingly all details, and some of the details are inspired, like the constant references to Les Miserables, a grim yet toe-tapping exploration of the bleak lives of the wretched of the earth enjoyed by people rich enough to afford tickets to its endless Broadway run.  Les Miserables is poverty porn.   Fittingly, while Bateman’s peers may love Les Miserables , they treat the contemporary descendants of the musical’s subjects with abuse and disdain, and Bateman, of course, treats them much worse, with murderous barbarity.

Time has given some of the novel’s clumsy pop-culture references a new resonance. Christian Bale famously modeled his brilliant, hilarious, star-making performance on Tom Cruise after watching the famed Scientologist on television with David Letterman. In American Psycho (where Bateman’s favorite show is Late Night With David Letterman ) the protagonist only really looks up to two non-musicians (Huey Lewis is sacred, the rest of humanity is scum). One is Tom Cruise, who lives in the penthouse of his building and who he fumblingly compliments for his performance in Bartender (which Bateman mistakes as the title for Cocktail ). The other rich, famous alpha-male who inspires a Wayne-and-Garth-style “We’re not worthy!” deference in this otherwise supremely arrogant and evil man is a Gordon Gekko-like exemplar of cheesy 1980s greed, the crazy-haired TV clown who is currently the most talked about man in the country: Donald J. Trump.

Trump is as much a fixture in the book as Les Miserables. He and (now ex-) wife Ivana are referenced regularly by Bateman, always with an uncharacteristic reverence. They are god and goddess in his world, or at least king and queen. Late in the book, Bateman, deep into a downward spiral of madness, gazes adoringly at a Trump building glistening in the sunlight and contemplates pulling out his gun and blowing away a pair of African-American hustlers running a three-card monte game. The scene eerily mirrors the fears of contemporary Trump detractors.

American Psycho doesn’t really break through the tedium until Bateman’s mask of sanity begins to slip. At this point, interchangeable conversations about fashion give way to interchangeable murders and freak-outs that are at least animated by a sleazy, lurid energy, and the book begins to develop a dark, shadowy momentum.

American Psycho gets more interesting as it goes along, but it remains shapeless, clumsy, and for the most part, desperately unfunny, especially compared to the film adaptation. Ellis’ stylistic gimmickry and game-playing — like having the narration switch briefly from first to third person late in the book, as Bateman’s desperation mounts and the walls seem to close in — is far more compelling than his prose.

Ellis’ American Psycho is far more interesting to joke about and think about and talk about and analyze than it is to read. The book is noteworthy and important more than it’s good, and the manic, non-stop pop-culture references, blurring between reality and fantasy, and postmodern elements found in it would be realized far more artfully and entertainingly by other books, television shows, movies, and music in the years to follow, including the film version of American Psycho , which took the book’s ugly clay and transformed it into a gorgeous sculpture of smart-ass cinematic pop art.

A quarter century after its release, American Psycho remains a scandal, controversy, pop-culture phenomenon, and a flashpoint for heated argument arguments about censorship, free expression, misogyny, violence and pornography more than a book people might actually read, and even more improbably, enjoy.

Yet, all these years later, the book retains its power to shock and offend. That may be a bit of a dubious distinction, but I suspect it’s one a provocateur like Ellis would embrace. Then again, I was repulsed by the gory, visceral ugliness of its violence and misogyny and offended in large part by the poor quality of its writing and construction, which I suspect Ellis would find considerably less flattering.

Nathan Rabin if a freelance writer, columnist, the first head writer of The A.V. Club and the author of four books, most recently Weird Al: The Book (with “Weird Al” Yankovic) and You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @NathanRabin

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