Q: How would you explain that special relationship between man and horses?

CROWE: Well I’m an absolute horse lover. It’s a very complex and long answer in its full sense, but I’ve always found that even from the time you’re a little kid they’re just like people, there are some horses that you have a deeper connection with immediately, and you can work on that over time. I found over the years the antithesis of some other people’s thought processes, the gentler that you are, and the most constant you are with the horse, the deeper that connection gets. And it’s funny doing these sort of movies, and I’ve done a few with animals, because you get really actually close, because the working relationship is quite intense, 10, 12 hours a day for a number of months, so it’s hard to say goodbye.

Q: He was using the whistle, do you have something in your personal life that you use?

CROWE: Yeah, yeah. It would depend on what the situation was, mainly just a series of mouth clicks actually.

Q: What makes your character the way he is, suddenly killing his friends?

CROWE: As I was saying, he just responds in the situation to what’s around him in order to survive. So he’s just that kind of animal himself.

Q: What makes him like that?

CROWE: Well, there’s a history that’s talked about in the film, whether or not that’s the complete version of his life story, that’s a different thing. You can throw out a lot of assumed experiences that an abandoned child might have in the old west, and all of those things will add up to where he is. I think one of the important things – because we’ve had no history of Wade being – we don’t know his future, we don’t know if he gets captured and all that sort of stuff, so I was always taking the attitude that he was actually very successful at what he did, and this is probably the fourth or fifth version of his ‘gang.’ And when they become too proficient, the gang members around him and the things that he taught them, that’s probably the time to clean the slate and move on and go and get himself another gang. There’s a story in The Princess Bride when they’re talking about the dread pirate robbers changing hands and that would go through my mind in terms of how to explain him.

Q: Can you talk a little more about each other, had you met before and if not, what surprised you about each other?

BALE:  No, we’d never met before at all. Whenever people asked me what I was doing next, and I said I was going to be working with Russell, they kind of looked like (oh no), ‘You’re going to be in for a tough ride with him.’ And it’s absolutely true. (Russell laughs) No, Russell was – I don’t mean to talk out of school, but a lot of actors, they sort of complain and winge and do everything to avoid actually getting on with the work, you know, so it’s nice when you’re working with somebody like Russell where you can just get to the point and you can have blunt conversations about the scenes, and it just makes it easy. He’s obviously, you don’t have to be told, he’s a bloody good actor and it’s a pleasure to work with somebody as good as that.

CROWE: Right from the first time we did a reading I could see that he had a sense of humor and was very balanced about what the job is, and all that sort of stuff. Once you’ve worn the cape, it must be hard to keep your feet on the ground.

BALE: This ain’t going to go away all bloody day!

CROWE: And you can tell there’s a lot of base jealousy coming from me about the fact that he gets to wear the cape.

BALE: I bought him his own special rubber outfit.

CROWE: Which I appreciate. I appreciate it greatly.

BALE: You’ll be seeing him in the meat district in Manhattan.

CROWE: We found it really easy to get on and when you’re dealing with – I mean, some of the days, we talked about Peter pulling out (off?) at 13 degrees, but actually some of the days were -15 and stuff like that, so it’s really nice to have an easy rapport when you’re trying to do complicated things in rough conditions.

BALE: Even though your jaw can’t move because it’s too cold to talk.

CROWE: The thing is it was easy, and the thing I think I said to him on the last night when we were finishing up, I just said to him that he’s all class, on a daily basis, always ready, got great questions, his choices with his weapons, the way he approached the horse riding, it’s all good. From my perspective, to know that the guy that you’re working with has put the effort in, is switched on, is ready to go regardless of the conditions and the hours and all that sort of stuff, just makes you feel like you’re in the right place.

BALE: We were both a number of drinks down the line by that time of course.

CROWE: Which is also a good thing; being able to simply finish a day’s work and have a regular conversation with a bloke over a beer without it being some big to do, breaking some sort of contemporary taboo or something, we don’t do that in Los Angeles.

Q: Can you talk about working on Batman right now?

BALE: Russell’s going to be actually in the new Batman movie, which is a big surprise and I want to reveal it to everybody right now!

Q: Are you going to do Justice League after

BALE: No.

CROWE: What about the Green Lantern?

BALE: NO!