We’ve made it to Day 20 of the 30-Day Horror Challenge. Two thirds of the way in and I’m still having a whole sloppy mess of fun with this challenge! For Day 20 the topic is “Favorite horror movie performance.”
There’s a lot of qualities you think of when it comes to horror movies, but strangely, acting isn’t always one of them! Maybe it’s more of a thing to focus on the BAD acting in a horror movie, or because horror actors are usually not your typical A-listers. However, now that I’m thinking about it, there are a whole host of fantastic performances in horror.
Shelley Duvall comes to mind for The Shining (even more than Jack Nicholson), as do Mia Farrow for Rosemary’s Baby or Anthony Perkins from Psycho, but I’m going to go with Christian Bale in American Psycho.
Christian Bale impresses me in most things he does but wow, American Psycho featured so much intensity in Bale’s performance. The inspiration for his role is said to be from an interview of Tom Cruise on the David Letterman show, Bale said it was just an intense, “nothing behind the eyes” interview that inspired the hollow-inside corporate world psycho killer persona he employed.
(thinks…) I can see it, now that you mention it. There’s just something about Tom Cruise, like a lizard wearing a skin suit!
I saw the ads for the movie at the time, and was expecting a more tongue-in-cheek sort of experience, making fun of corporate culture as being complete psychos, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I got instead. He’s known for being an extreme method actor who is practically consumed by the roles he’s playing at the time, what a nightmare he must have been that year!