Christian Bale sits down with The Today Show’s Matt Lauer to talk about the upcoming summer blockbuster, The Dark Knight, opening this Friday. Here’s a snippet of the interview:

So much was made of Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. It was such a dark role. In some way, perhaps, do you think in real life, it caused him to slip across some line of reality and may have had some role in his accidental death? Personally, I find it to be a complete lack of understanding of acting. I also find it very rude to try to create some kind of sound bite for such a tragedy. The man was a complex man, a good man, but you know what? I saw him having the best time playing The Joker. He was someone who completely immersed himself in his role. As do I. But in the end of the day, he was having a wonderful time doing it, He couldn’t have been happier doing it.

Watch Bale’s interview below!

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Director Christopher Nolan spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the late Heath Ledger, who plays The Joker in the upcoming superhero blockbuster, The Dark Knight. Here’s what he had to say:

On Heath’s commitment to his character: ”The guy had serious nuts. What I needed was someone who wouldn’t be afraid of the comparison with Jack Nicholson. And then I saw Heath’s incredible performance in Brokeback Mountain. Such a lack of vanity. This was an actor who wasn’t afraid to bury himself in his character — to a massive extent.”

On having the same vision for the The Joker as Heath: ”We had the same take on the character. We didn’t have a script yet, but we had ideas. The idea of anarchy as an absolute. The idea of chaos as the most frightening thing to society. The idea of a motiveless criminal, somebody who just wants to watch the world burn.”

On Heath spending months working with a voice coach fine-tuning the Joker’s cackling cadence: “He tried to articulate to me what he was doing with his voice, but it was sometimes hard to understand. He talked about ventriloquist dummies, the way their mouths moved, the way their voices wouldn’t appear to come out of them. He said he wanted the voice to have a mocking quality, a sort of disconnectedness.”

On Heath splattering makeup across his face throughout the film: ”He started applying the makeup himself — just to see what it would look like if he put it on with his own hands. We talked about how streaking the paint could get across the idea of corruption, of decay.”

To read the full Dark Knight article, check out EW.com.

Christian Bale talks parenting, privacy and “kindred spirit” Heath Ledger in the new issue of Parade. Here are some great excerpts:

Your co-star Heath Ledger, who plays The Joker, died tragically after the film wrapped. Do you mind talking about him? No, listen, I want to talk about Heath.
When you miss somebody, you want to speak about him. He was a unique character, a very infectious character. He was a good man, and I was glad to have spent time with him. He
was somebody who I’d been seeing on a daily basis for months. It takes a long time to accept that someone’s gone, when all body and mind are telling you that this is somebody you will know for a great deal of time. He was something of a kindred spirit to myself.

It must be difficult. Much of it has to do with my respect for his daughter, whom he loved so dearly and whom he would talk about so often. For me, that is of incredible importance. I hope in a small way that The Dark Knight can be a celebration of his work. Not like the hideous circus after he died, which I felt was an invasion of a private life. This movie is not a personal home video. This is what he did. I hope people will embrace that in the correct fashion.

Tell me about agreeing to do the next Terminator. I’ve always had two varying degrees of success, and I’m not talking about anything to do with box office. I’m talking about my own parameters. You know, an interest in attempting in a wide variety of stories. I never desired to be a big studio movie actor, action actor. I’ve never desired to be a serious independent movie actor. I enjoy all of those. It depends on what mood I’m in. And therefore, I will try to bend those stories into becoming something that I can enjoy myself, varying degrees of success with that. We have an opportunity with it for a continuation, but also a reinvention, and I have to say, much the same way in my mind as we have with Batman. And beyond that I won’t say anymore because we’re just starting. (Editor’s Translation: “No, I can’t talk about it.”)

For the full interview and web-exclusive photos, visit Parade.com.

Billionaire by day, Caped Crusader by night!

Wearing the famous milk mustache for a second time, Batman’s Christian Bale from The Dark Knight is the latest hero to support the “Body by Milk” campaign, created to encourage teens to drink three glasses of lowfat or fat free milk everyday, eat right and be active to stay lean and healthy.

Batman’s ad copy reads: “Others reload. Batman refuels. Research suggests that milk’s unique mix of nutrients can help athletes recover after exercise. And its protein can help build muscle. So train hard and drink lowfat or fat free milk, because the Batmobile isn’t the only thing that needs to refuel.”

The ad launches on June 1. The Dark Knight opens everywhere on July 18.

For more an opportunity to be drawn into a Batman comic book, visit BodyByMilk.com. Bigger Bale ad here.

Here are some great new pictures from the inside photo spread of Christian Bale in the June 2008 issue of Details. And here are some more highlights from the interview:

Taking the role of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho was widely regarded as career suicide. Yes. I always enjoyed the idea of self-destructing on purpose, taking something that was important to me—acting—and just becoming unhireable. To test how important it really was for me. [American Psycho] turned out to be the opposite. That brought me much more work.

Do you remember the last time you were [in danger of not making enough money to support yourself through acting]? [Long pause.] I know absolutely when it was; I’m just trying to decide how comfortable I am talking about it. Certainly . . . what year are we in? 2008? Only going back five years. Absolutely, yeah. House repossession—all that.

Have you ever done anything just for the money? Movies? Um . . . well, I guess there was one particular time—and I won’t tell you what it was—but it was following closely on the heels of the other thing that I didn’t want to talk about very much. It ended up that I found a great many experiences from it—but the motivation was completely keeping the head above water, yes.

How good do you think you are at being famous? I don’t really understand the question. Because there are people that you would undeniably call famous, and I’m not. You can go to many, many people and say “Christian Bale” and they have no idea who the hell you’re talking about. They might have seen a number of my movies, but they’ll still have no idea who you’re talking about. So I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about fame.

To read the full Bale interview, visit Details.com.

In the June 2008 issue of Details Magazine, Christian Bale celebrates the work of the late Heath Ledger, his co-star in the upcoming Batman film. The Dark Knight.

Bale said, “He was incredibly intense in his performance but incredibly mellow and laid-back. Certainly there was this great anarchistic streak to it  just getting dirtier than anybody’s envisioned the Joker before. … Naturally, (the movie) was something I wanted to share with him  and expected to do so. And I can’t do anything else but hope that it will be an absolutely appropriate celebration of his work.”

To read the full interview, visit Details.com.

It was also recently announced that Bale, 34, will play the role of John Connor in 3 sequels to the Terminator franchise.

“Christian was our first choice and he’s a big fan of The Terminator, so we’re very lucky,” co-producer Victor Kubicek told the BBC at the Cannes Film Festival.

A new trailer for The Dark Knight was released this past weekend, giving us a slightly bigger look into what is coming on July 18th.

While we’ve seen a lot of Heath Ledger‘s Joker, the latest trailer gave us a little more on Aaron Eckhart‘s Harvey Dent, who ultimately becomes Two-Face.

“I can tell you that, basically, when you look at Two-Face, you should get sick to your stomach,” Eckhart told the LA Times of his Two-Face appearance. Being the guy under all that, well, that was a lot of fun for me. It’s like you would feel if you met someone whose face had pretty much been ripped off or burned off with acid. I can’t talk about it beyond that because I don’t want to give away too much of the plans by Chris [Nolan].”

“To me, this film is about how Batman feels about justice, how he takes care of the city, how he feels about the Joker when he meets him and sees what he is capable of doing. How he feels when Harvey Two-Face takes matters into his own hands. It’s not simple, and it gets ugly. I think people will be surprised.”

Check out the high-quality version of the trailer at Why So Serious.