Here comes trouble

Bale is the kind of actor the true auteurs seek out. Thus he's just wrapped a small part for Todd Haynes (who directed him in "Velvet Goldmine") in the Bob Dylan-inspired film "I'm Not There," and he's about to "go toe to toe," as he happily relates, with Russell Crowe in James Mangold's western remake (from Elmore Leonard's original story), "3:10 to Yuma."

Bale, of course, memorably portrayed an English lad besotted with fighters (notably the P-51 Mustang, which caused him to shout, "Cadillac of the sky") when Steven Spielberg featured him at age 12 in 1987's "Empire of the Sun."

He laughs at portrayals of himself as a Welshman when he was actually a Royal Air Force brat who grew up alongside three older sisters in a series of some 15 towns, mostly in rural English townships, amid the worldly, chin-up types who populate air bases. (He dedicated his "Batman Begins" performance to his aviator dad, who succumbed to a brain tumor in 2003.)

Ever courteous, Bale finds a way to dismantle questions about the past: "I don't like looking back too much. I kind of like looking forward and that's it. I don't have too many conversations ... at least, I never start them, anyway."

But he can't help remembering the "Empire of the Sun" press tour where he gave vent to his nerves by jabbing an orange with a pen, ultimately growing so sick of the attention and frenzy that he ran from a Paris hotel suite onto the Champs Elysees.

That, along with issues of pretending for a living, is somewhat ancient history now: "I don't regret it because I just naturally was inclined towards this interest of getting into other people's heads, but perhaps ... it's better to begin once you feel like you know yourself a little bit better. Otherwise it could end up being very confusing about exactly who the hell you are when at that age you're spending so much time pretending to be other people."

Such quandaries are of course the very stuff of Nolan's films, and Bale's performance in "The Prestige" makes use of Bale's craft to convey what Nolan feels is a key truth: "We are different people to the different people in our lives."

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Nolan wanted him back

ALTHOUGH he waited for Bale to approach him about the role of obsessive magician Alfred Borden (Hugh Jackman, who plays Borden's great competitor, says he found Bale's work "inspiring"), once they discussed it Nolan was avid to sign the actor on once more. (It was a given that Bale would also return in Nolan's Batman sequel, "The Dark Knight," due to start shooting in the spring for a release in 2008.)