Famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio was about to play Christian Bale’s role of Patrick Bateman in the renowned 2000 film American Psycho, but he was told by feminist pioneer Gloria Steinheim to think about his young female fans before the film. Gloria had always been a critic when the American Psycho book was initially published. DiCaprio was about to portray the role of a serial killer in the 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ bestseller but later replaced by Christian Bale.
Leonardo DiCaprio got scared?
Cast member and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner revealed that in a Vice 20th anniversary oral history of the film Steinheim warned the actor that all of his female fans who had just started praising his performance as Jack in 1998’s iconic movie Titanic would not take it well if his follow-up film based on brutal violence against women.
On the other hand, Wall Street director Oliver Stone replaced the director and co-screenwriter Mary Harron because she wanted to have Bale as the lead. However, she was brought back in after a few weeks.
According to Guinevere Turner, she had heard that Steinem said to DiCaprio: “Coming off of Titanic, there is an entire planet full of 13-year-old girls waiting to see what you do next, and this is going to be a movie that has horrible violence toward women.”
Notably, Steinem ended up tied the knot with Christian Bale’s father and Turner wondered if it was some Thanksgiving. On the other hand, the director, Mary Harron, said that she didn’t have DiCaprio in mind for the role, despite him being the most in-demand actor in Hollywood after his iconic Titanic.
“I knew I would find him charming, and then I would find myself getting into doing it with him,” she revealed. “They would change the script and try to make the character more sympathetic, and it was just going to lose anything it really had.”
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