Tom Cruise: American Psycho?

source: blackbookmag.com

This one makes so much sense we cannot believe we didn’t piece it together sooner. Director Mary Harron has revealed that Christian Bale‘s terrifying performance in American Psycho was inspired by Tom Cruise.

The 1999 film was based on the controversial novel by Bret Easton Ellis, in which a smiling yuppie named Patrick Bateman (Bale) took the capitalist excesses of the 1980’s to its natural conclusion: serial killing.

Harron unveiled the revelation in an interview with Black Book Mag. When asked how she and Christian Bale developed the character of Patrick Bateman, she spoke thusly:

It was definitely a process. We talked a lot, but he was in L.A. and I was in New York. We didn’t actually meet in person a lot, just talked on the phone. 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. 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.

I’ve made no secret of my admiration of Tom Cruise on this blog. I genuinely think he is one of the best and most charismatic actors working today. However, when photos like this exist:

… it’s hard to deny that he isn’t perfect inspiration for a maniacal murderer.

Discuss: OK, a lot to talk about here. Any thoughts?