In a time when celebrities are most often associated with
sex tapes, court appearances, and rehab, it’s refreshing to report on the good
deeds and quiet humility of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Following the recent mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado at a
midnight screening of The Dark Knight
Rises, internet campaigns urged the movie’s star Christian Bale to visit
the town. One young woman sent out a Facebook plea to the onscreen Batman,
pointing out that the hospitalized victims “need to know Heroes can be real
too, not just the bad guys.”
Bale set out to prove just that. He went
to Aurora (as a private individual, not a representative of the Warner
Brothers studio) to offer his condolences to the victims of the massacre, and his
gratitude to the hospital staff at the Swedish Medical Center and The Medical
Center of Aurora.
“He just said he wanted to come to thank all of us because
he has been thinking about this,” said
a hospital official. “He did this out of his heart, and you could really tell.
It was so sincere," she said. “It was just, ‘Thank you.’”
As he did with another recent act of kindness. Bale heard
about Ohio four-year-old Jayden Barber, diagnosed with terminal leukemia. It
was Jayden’s dream to meet his idol Batman. So Bale flew him and his entire
family out to Los Angeles, spent a whole day at Disneyland with him, and put up
his family at a hotel there for the week.
This too was kept quiet until the family revealed all on
their Facebook page. Jayden’s mother wrote
that Bale and her son “talked movies and super Heros [sic] and he was genuinely
happy to hear about everything Jayden wanted to tell him.”
That wasn’t all. Last December Bale, in China for a movie premiere,
traveled eight hours from Beijing in an attempt to visit Chinese dissident Chen
Guangcheng, who was under unofficial house arrest. “What I really wanted to do
was shake the man's hand and say thank you, tell him what an inspiration he
is,” said
Bale. He was confronted there by thuggish guards who manhandled him and
then followed his car until he was out of the vicinity. Bale asserted that he
was "not being brave” by trying to contact Chen; but in fact, through this
gesture of support, Bale was taking a courageous stance against the
totalitarian authorities.
But even superheroes stumble. Three years ago a profanity-laced
audiotape of Bale ranting at a crew member on the set of Terminator Salvation hit the internet and caused a stir. He took
responsibility for it, and a few days later offered his public contrition: “I was
out of order beyond belief,” he acknowledged.
“I acted like a punk… I made it ugly. That was awful of me. I took it way too
far.” The film’s director said at the time, “Christian doesn't feel good about
this. He's given thought to the adjustments he wants to give to his life.
Christian is a good man.”
Heroism isn’t always about overpowering the bad guy.
Sometimes it’s manifested in simple but meaningful gestures of humility and
kindness like those exhibited by Christian Bale, the man behind the Dark
Knight’s mask.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 9/14/12)
