Bale brings a forgotten Brum hero to big sceen
Christian Bale and Matt Damon are back in real life motor racing drama Le Mans ‘66. They tell LAURA HARDING they share their characters’ drive for perfection
He’s not a car fanatic, but he jumped at the chance to get behind the wheel of some of the film’s more spectacular cars (replicas, because the real ones are displayed in museums).
He adds: “We had a great time driving the Cobras and the GT40s and the old country squire.”
It also helped that he felt an affinity with Miles, who is blunt, uncompromising, and shuns authority in the film.
“I think everybody involved in any sort of endeavour that requires benefactors or a great deal of money, there is always that necessary conflict,” he says.
“I actually think it’s a healthy thing; it’s good.
“Miles and Shelby’s passionate, obsessive endeavours to do what they loved doing required a lot of money. That is exactly the same as what we do, it’s very relatable.”
Christian is also no stranger to playing a real-life person – it is less than a year since he was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of former American Vice President Dick Cheney in Vice – and he’s become adept at slipping into someone else’s skin.
“There’s a freedom to playing real characters because they’ve got definite mannerisms, they’ve got their eccentricities, they’ve got their voice, everything is there.
“I feel more liberated playing a real person because I know it’s not my own ego driving choices.”
Matt also absorbed as much source material as he could to play the tough and creative Shelby.
“He was no stranger to an interview, so there was a lot of material I could go through to look at and see the public facing side of him,” the Bourne Identity star says.
“But that was fun to juxtapose to these quiet times, when he’s building the car and that’s the artist in the guy.
“Everybody I talked to said he could sell you anything, he was a master salesman, he was very good at working a room, a very charismatic guy, but he was also this very intense racer and designer.
“And that is really the foundation of the movie, that friendship that he has with Miles.”
It was the physical and tactile nature of the building of the car that first fascinated the film’s director, James Mangold, who most recently made Wolverine film Logan, starring Hugh Jackman.
“This was a time when people put things together with their hands, and discovered whether they worked or not with their hands,” he says animatedly.
“Not from a computer model, but by putting their bodies at risk in these tin cans at high speeds.
“In so many ways our culture used to be a manufacturing culture, a doing culture, a making culture, and we have become largely an information culture and it strips us of something romantic, about the idea of building something and riding it to victory.” He pauses for breath.
“I still experience it making films. There is this romantic quest, in this most corporate of worlds, to try and get movies made that actually mean something other than ‘buy this product’.”
Le Mans ‘66 is out now in cinemas.