20 Best Performances In Horror Movies

The amount of things Christian Bale achieves in American Psycho truly has to be seen to be believed. After years acting in a series of poor to bad productions (despite a solid break-out role in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun), American Psycho finally launched Bale to superstardom and gave the actor a chance to show what he was made of.

In the deranged slasher, Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, a successful investment banker who revels in his wealth, attractiveness and need to be better than everyone in the room. He's arrogant, casually cruel, and is shown to have a second, secret life in which he kills sex workers and homeless people to quench an unrelenting bloodlust.

Bale gives the performance of a lifetime - which has been unfairly overshadowed through the years by his frightening commitment to method acting - playing Bateman with remarkable intensity and dark humour. He's misogynistic, a liar and a cheat, and yet he's often uncomfortably funny and brilliantly manipulative.

Bale controls every complex angle of his character to perfection, allowing audiences to watch Bateman lose his mind, kill, dance, and lie his way to the film's expertly crafted final scene.