What They Do Best: The Four Leading Men of Heat and Heat 2

Notes on Christian Bale, Leo, Pacino, DeNiro, and all things 'Heat' and 'Heat 2'

Christian Bale has appeared to confirm after months of speculation¹ that he will join Leonardo DiCaprio in Michael Mann’s upcoming Heat sequel. As someone who has been following Leo’s career since I was nine years old², has been a huge Heat fan since college and is also a recent scholar³ in Bale’s filmography, I feel like I was born for this very specific casting announcement…

I waited all damn day to see if this news was confirmed by any source other than Screen Rant and Reddit (no shade). Once I found articles on Yahoo! and finally, AV Club, I decided to pull the trigger. And sure, things can happen to major projects and casting choices in Hollywood... But since it’s Mann and two of the biggest actors of our generation invested, let’s just assume all goes off without a hitch and this Substack post will never later be described as “not aging well.” And if it is? Well then this was a fun little experiment in ideals and hypotheticals, and you learned a thing or two from a woman about four of your favorite dude actors.⁴

“I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently.”

- Christian Bale on Leonardo DiCaprio in 2022

So, to recap:

There’s DiCaprio – the 90s heartthrob-turned-serious-actor who has maintained one of the most consistent levels of A-List celebrity in the last few decades of our lives. And then there’s Bale – the (alleged) “method” actor who seems to shrug off fame as an unavoidable annoyance while he dives deep into his work. Both highly regarded, both prestigious-level actors, and both completely unknowable and mysterious in their own ways.

For anyone who cares about frivolous actor lore, you may have already heard whispers of how DiCaprio has “beat out” roles from Bale in the past. And with that, let me take you back to this GQ interview Bale did in 2022:

GQ: I’m surprised to hear that you were getting paid so little: Was that the nature of American Psycho or was it the nature of your position in the industry at the time?

BALE: Uh, it was the nature of me in it. Nobody wanted me to do it except the director. So they said they would only make it if they could pay me that amount. I was prepping for it when other people were playing the part. I was still prepping for it. And, you know, it moved on. I lost my mind. But I won it back.

GQ: One of the people who was briefly cast ahead of you in the part was Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ve seen it reported that you lost at least five roles to DiCaprio in the ’90s, including Titanic.

BALE: Oh, dude. It’s not just me. Look, to this day, any role that anybody gets, it’s only because he’s passed on it beforehand. It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you. It doesn’t matter how friendly you are with the directors. All those people that I’ve worked with multiple times, they all offered every one of those roles to him first. Right? I had one of those people actually tell me that. So, thank you, Leo, because literally, he gets to choose everything he does. And good for him, he’s phenomenal.

GQ: Did you ever take that personally?

BALE: No. Do you know how grateful I am to get any damn thing? I mean, I can’t do what he does. I wouldn’t want the exposure that he has either. And he does it magnificently. But I would suspect that almost everybody of similar age to him in Hollywood owes their careers to him passing on whatever project it is.

Now. Can you imagine a world where Leonardo DiCaprio played Patrick Bateman? For some reason, I feel like it would’ve eventually gotten buried like DiCaprio’s team (allegedly) did with his film Total Eclipse (1995).

But I digress.

Let’s go back to the original Heat (also 1995) and the conversation surrounding Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. Both actors rose to fame in the 1970s in what have long been called their “parallel” careers. Though the two starred in The Godfather Part II (1974), they – like Bale and DiCaprio – had never acted opposite one another until Heat. The diner scene in the film was their first scene ever, and that’s only one of the reasons it’s so iconic.

Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro in Heat (1995)

Because of the hype surrounding the pairing and their often-compared careers, myths began popping up about behind-the-scenes set drama and clashing acting methods. One such piece of gossip led Mann to eventually squash a rumor that Pacino and DeNiro did not actually film opposite of one another in the diner scene. In his book and on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Pacino himself cleared the air that there was ever any rivalry; instead, the competition seems to be nothing more than a juicy fiction crafted by the outside world.

A Deadline article detailing a Heat special screening and Q&A with the two actors and the director a decade ago quoted Mann talking about the pair:

As for the small number of scenes shared by the film’s two stars, Mann explained how the two playing off one another increased the subtlety of their performances. “If Bob is shifting his weight,” Mann said, “Al is doing something to counter,” almost, he explained, as if afraid De Niro might go for a gun. The diner scene in particular was also fairly raw, done at De Niro’s suggestion without any rehearsal before they set about filming it.

As Bale said himself, he could never do what Leo does (game and maintain huge celebrity). Similarly, I would argue that Leo could never do what Bale does (completely disappear and transform to an unrecognizable level in roles, maybe because of his aforementioned celebrity).

But one thing is almost for certain: this is going to be the most reserved, aloof press tour of all time. Two men of very few words in interviews, both seeming to subscribe to a “the less you know about me, the better my performance is” school of PR⁵. But the fact is, they don’t need to do press the way most other actors have to. Their names (along with Mann’s) carry the star power to get people in the seats come opening weekend. And ultimately, I can think of very few other pairings in Hollywood today that hold just as much weight as DeNiro and Pacino did in 1995.

Too long, didn’t read: I will be seated.

1. DiCaprio had been confirmed already

2. after Romeo + Juliet at a sleepover, to be exact…

3. self-sponsored

4. No fear: Bale himself confirmed it to Extra

5. aka a PR team’s worst nightmare